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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Letters 



ON 



SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS 



IN ANSWER TO 



Inquiring Souls. 



BY 

V •' 
WILLIAM H. HOLCOMBE, M.D. 

Author of " Our Children in Heaven," " The Other Life," 
" The End of the World," Etc., Etc. 






PHILADELPHIA: 

PORTER & COATES. 

1885. 



Ij^gHlNOTOirl 



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Copyright. 
WILLIAM H. HOLCOMBE. 

1884. 



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COLLINS, PRINTER. 



Preface. 



IN the early part of 1882 there appeared in the New 
Church Independent, four essays upon the Opening 
of the Interior Degrees of the Human Spirit, and the 
Descent of the Lord into Ultimates. They attracted 
considerable attention, and I have received many letters 
from earnest and anxious souls, desirous of learning 
more of the Second Coming of the Lord by interior 
processes, and of that New Life which his coming will 
establish in the world. 

Some of my responses to those letters are here col- 
lected, and so arranged as to give an appearance of 
order and continuity to the subjects discussed. If the 
reader discovers occasional reiterations of the same 
ideas, he will understand that it was scarcely avoidable 
in writing to different persons about the same things. 
Fortunately the reiterations relate to important truths 
which cannot be too often repeated or too deeply im- 
pressed on the mind. 

The four Essays which elicited the correspondence, 
are here published in the form of Appendix. Those who 

I* V 



VI PREFACE. 

are acquainted with the philosophical and theological 
teachings of Swedenborg, will do well to read the Es- 
says first and the Letters afterwards. Those who know 
little or nothing of the doctrines of the New Church, 
will find the reading of the Letters a suitable prep- 
aration for a more thorough understanding of the 
Essays. 

It is useless to say anything to prejudice the reader's 
mind in favor of the contents of this volume. It is al- 
ready " made up " by the necessities of its own organic 
conditions. Those who see truth by a certain interior 
light, will hail these things with faith and joy, without 
caring for the name of the author, or the sources of his 
enlightenment. Those who believe in the authority of 
Authority, will doubt and cavil and very generally re- 
ject. The great majority of the reading and thinking 
public, if it gives the subject any attention at all, will 
dismiss it as an idle tale or a poetic dream. 

To the receivers of the heavenly doctrines revealed 
through Swedenborg I would say, that the book makes 
no claim to any special revelation, nor its author to 
any spiritual state not accessible to and attainable by 
all others under similar conditions. 

The Lord is perpetually striving to manifest Himself, 
and the New Life continually presses for utterance ; but 
the effort can be successful only so far as suitable envi- 
ronments have been prepared for its reception. Hence 



PREFACE. Vll 

the injunction : " Prepare ye the way of the Lord : make 
straight in the desert a highway for our God." 

During the century preceding Swedenborg's active 
career, there was a remarkable development of relig- 
ious fervor, limited in extent but of great intensity, and 
many abortive attempts were made to manifest the 
genuine life of heaven upon earth. The cause of the 
failure of Molinos, Guyon, Fenelon, Bourignon, and 
others, is very instructive. It was from ignorance of 
the true relations between internal and external things, 
which led to a total separation — theoretical and some- 
times practical — of the spiritual from the natural or 
social and business life. Their beautiful and mysteri- 
ous castles in the air, had no solid foundation on the 
earth. 

Swedenborg was sent, like John the Baptist, to pre- 
pare the way of the Lord and make his paths straight. 
This was done by teaching a vast system of spiritual 
truth which not only leads to repentance, but delivers 
us from falsities and brings us into judgment. This 
system shows the organic connection and correspond- 
ence between spiritual and natural things, and demon- 
strates scientifically, that internal religion without its 
external basis, and external religion without its internal 
spirit, are equally sentimental, unreal, and fantastic. 

It is very certain that old things are passing away, 
and a new basis of faith is being gradually constructed 



Vlll PREFACE. 

in the world. Will it be a "highway in the desert for 
our God " ? Will it be the solid ground-work and 
foundation of a higher, and purer, and holier life than 
has ever before been realized in the church ? Are 
the environments ready ? If the New Man of the New 
Era were now ushered into the world, would he survive 
or would he perish ? 

W. H. H. 

New Orleans, La., 
Dec. 4, 1884. 



Contents. 



LETTER I. 

PAGE 

The Second Coming of the Lord, a Descent from Within, 
both General and Special . 15 

LETTER II. 

Three Degrees of Human Life: Celestial, Spiritual, and 
Natural - . .30 

LETTER III. 

The Three-fold Appearance of the Lord . . . .41 

LETTER IV. 

The Lord as Physician : " Who Healeth all Thy Diseases " 45 

LETTER V. 

Remains: "The Remnant:" The Old and New Proprium . 56 

LETTER VI. 
Ecclesiastical and Vital Religion 67 

LETTER VII. 

The New Life. — Madam Guyon. — The Religious Proprium . 77 

LETTER VIII. 
Shai.t. We Know Ourselves, or Not? 82 



X CONTENTS. 

LETTER IX. 

PAGE 
SWEDENBORG AND PAUL ON THE NEW BlRTH, AND THE GRAND 

Man . 87 

LETTER X. 

Answer to Inquiries about the New Life . . . .100 

LETTER XL 
The Inner Way. — Jones Very 107 

LETTER XII. 
The Internal and the External Way 122 

LETTER XIII. 

The Seed Growing: The Proprium and the New Life. . 126 

LETTER XIV. 

The Terrors of the New Life: Spiritual Temptations . 130 

LETTER XV. 
The Celestial Man Again 139 

LETTER XVI. 

The Descent of the Lord through the Conjugial Sphere . 143 

LETTER XVII. 

Divorce, from the Stand-point of the Celestial Church . 153 

LETTER XVIII. 
Objections Answered 164 

LETTER XIX. 

The Celestial Forgive All Things, even Adultery . .177 



CONTENTS. XI 

LETTER XX. 

PAGE 

Swedenborg's View of External and Internal . . .181 

LETTER XXL 

The Philosophy of Creation: Nature Absolutely Dead . 189 

LETTER XXIL 
Advice to a Wounded Spirit 194 

LETTER XXIII. 
Coercion in Religious Matters 199 

LETTER XXIV. 

Conviction of Sin: Infidel Doubts: The Two Propriums . 205 

LETTER XXV. 

Confirmed in False Doctrines: Brought into Judgment .211 

LETTER XXVI. 

Unfolding of Interior States 217 

LETTER XXVII. 

Freedom of Thought, etc. — How is the Lord Nearer to Us ? 
— Remnants of the Most Ancient Church . . . 223 

LETTER XXVIII. 

Why should We not Communicate with the Departed? — 
Swedenborgians and Spiritualists 231 

LETTER XXIX. 

Mediums in the New Church : The Phenomena and the Law 
of the Phenomena 239 



XU CONTENTS. 

LETTER XXX. 

PAGE 

The Bible of the Spiritualists. — The True Tests of Reve- 
lation. — Religious Cranks 249 

LETTER XXXI. 

The Divine Motherhood Criticised 254 

LETTER XXXII. 

To a Newchurchman Infested by Spirits .... 256 

LETTER XXXIII. 

If the Hells were Subjugated by the Lord, what Need of 
. a Second Coming? — Why is Spiritism so Generally Evil 
and False? 259 

LETTER XXXIV. 

The Opening of Degrees. — The New Era. — Reticence or 

Revelation? 263 

LETTER XXXV. 

On some Obscure Passages of Scripture 275 

LETTER XXXVI. 

Shall We Stay in the Old Church ?— Marrying Outside of 
the New Church. — How Shall We be Saved? . . 284 

LETTER XXXVII. 

The New Movement, Old as well as New — That Skeleton 
in the New- Church Closet 294 

LETTER XXXVIII. 

Shall We Join an External New Church ? . . . 301 



CONTENTS. Xlll 

LETTER XXXIX. 

PAGE 

The Descent of the Celestial Through the Spiritual into 
the Natural 308 

LETTER XL. 

Restatement of Fundamental Principles . . . . 314 



APPENDIX. 

THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

ESSAY I. 
Opening of the Interiors 325 

ESSAY II. 
The Lord's Descent Through the Heavens , . . .341 

ESSAY III. 

The Lord's Descent into the Natural Plane of the Hu- 
man Mind 358 

ESSAY IV. 
The Lord's Kingdom on Earth. — The New Life . . . 382 
2 



ABBREVIATIONS 

OF THE WORKS OF SWEDENBORG QUOTED OR REFERRED TO IN 
THE FOLLOWING PAGES. 

A. C. stand for Arcana Ccelestia. 

T. C. R. " True Christian Religion. 

H. H. " Heaven and Hell. 

D. P. " Divine Providence. 

A. R. " Apocalypse Revealed. 

A. E. " Apocalypse Explained. 

S. D., or Spl. D. " Spiritual Diary. 

C. L. " Conjugial Love. 

L. J. " Last Judgment. 

Contin. L. J. " Continuation of the Last Judgment. 

N. J. D. " Doctrine of the New Jerusalem. 



Letters 



ON 



Spiritual Subjects. 



LETTER I. 



THE SECOND COMING OF THE LORD, A DESCENT FROM 
WITHIN, BOTH GENERAL AND SPECIAL. 



M 



" Y DEAR FRIEND :— You are astonished at my declara- 
tion that the Lord Jesus Christ has come again, with his 
own personal divine-human sphere, and that He now 
stands upon the earth, ready, under the proper conditions, to 
reveal his presence and power to men, just as truly as He 
stood upon the earth when He appeared to Mary in the garden, 
to the disciples by the way, to the incredulous Thomas in the 
room closed from fear of the Jews, and to Peter and John by 
the seaside, when the disciples durst not ask Him, Who art 
Thou? "knowing that it was the Lord." 

This, you say, is a statement so remarkable, so remote from 
the perceptions and cognitions of men, that it requires to be 
very fully and clearly explained, or to be immensely qualified. 
I will offer a few suggestions which may give you a little more 
light on the subject. 

In the first place, let us seriously consider what is meant by 

15 



l6 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

the coming and going away of the Lord. He said to the 
Pharisees, " Ye cannot tell whence I come, and whither I go," 
and immediately gives the reason of their ignorance: "Ye 
judge after the flesh," that is, ye judge from your sensuous, 
scientific, and rational standpoints, from which you never can 
discover any spiritual truth. But He said to his disciples, 
" Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know; " and to the 
ever-doubting Thomas, who still does not comprehend Him, 
He says, " I am the way, the truth, and the life." The com- 
ing and going of the Lord are therefore spiritual phenomena, 
dependent upon personal states and experiences, and explicable 
by spiritual and not by natural laws. 

God is one and indivisible. In Himself there are no dif- 
ferentiations or divisions into Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. 
These differentiations or different conceptions of Him are 
made in the triune, organic, finite structures of the human 
mind, just as the white ray of light is broken up in the prism 
into several rays differing in appearance and properties. We 
know nothing whatever of God except as He has revealed 
Himself in the Lord Jesus Christ (Jno. i. 18), in whose person 
" the fulness of the Godhead " or the Divine Trinity resides. 
Now the Lord is omnipresent ; neither here nor there, but 
everywhere simultaneously. When He is said to come and 
go, it is clearly an appearance due to changes occurring, not 
in Him, for He is unchangeable, but in the states of the human 
mind itself, which at one time, or under certain circumstances, 
recognizes his presence, and at another time, or under other 
conditions, does not recognize it. 

In the next place let us look at some peculiar features of his 
first coming, or incarnation. How could that event possibly 
have occurred without there being the slightest change in the 



SECOND COMING OF THE LORD. \J 

Divine whereabouts ? While the historical man, Jesus Christ, 
was living out his divine life in Judea, his spirit was every- 
where and simultaneously present throughout the universe. 
The Jesus Christ perceptible and cognizable by men, was 
only the Divine Being as received, limited, and projected 
through the mind of the Jewish church. His career was 
therefore representative and significative of the organic spir- 
itual states of that church and determined by them. There- 
fore, also, all his words and deeds were parables, representative 
and significative of spiritual truths. He could force no exter- 
nal belief in Him. Unbelief even suspends the working of 
his power. Every man saw Him and judged of Him from 
his own standpoint. To some, He was only the carpenter's 
son, and how could they comprehend the sources of his knowl- 
edge ? To others, He was a gluttonous man and a wine-bib- 
ber, "a friend of publicans and sinners/' and how could they 
appreciate his mission? To some, He " had a devil and was 
mad ; " and why should they listen to his words ? To others, 
He was a deceiver and a blasphemer, and why should they 
not crucify Him ? To some, He was Elias, or John the Baptist, 
or one of the old prophets risen from the dead. But to his 
disciples He was " the Christ, the Son of the living God," or 
the divine truth emanating from the divine good. Nor did 
they perceive Him in his true light from the " flesh and 
blood," or the external standpoints of the Jewish church, 
which altogether rejected Him, but from the interior illumi- 
nating power of the Divine Love, "the Father which is in 
heaven." And this interior perception of truth from the stand- 
point of good, is the rock upon which the church is built. 

But why was the Divine Being, at his first coming, projected 
through the mind of the church as an external man like our- 
2* B 



1 8 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

selves ? But first mark in this place, that Jesus Christ was a 
genuine objective human being, and not a mere appearance, as 
Tulk and some others have supposed. Our sun, with its heat 
and light, is a projection of the Divine mind through the sun 
of the spiritual world, but what can be more real and substan- 
tial ? And so of the body and the external life of Christ. The 
reason why He became a man in the lowest or sensuo-corporeal 
degree, was this : The Divine Life found no plane or resting- 
place in the affections of the church, for they were confirmed 
in evils ; and so their celestial degree was closed to the influx 
of the divine love. It could find no plane or resting-place in 
their thoughts, for they were confirmed in false doctrines, and 
the spiritual degree was closed to the influx of the divine 
wisdom. It could find no plane or resting-place in their nat- 
ural degree of life and conduct, for that was the ultimate effect 
of their interior evils and falsities. There was, therefore, no 
abiding place for Him. The foxes and birds of the old self- 
hood had ample provision, " but the Son of man had not 
where to lay his head." " He came unto his own, and his 
own received Him not." 

The Divine Life therefore, impregnating the virgin affection 
for truth, the last feeble remains of genuine good and truth 
in the world, produced that extraordinary human being, the 
historical Christ, born without natural father, both God and 
man, living a divine life but tempted as we are, putting off 
everything derived from the mother, and passing away, even 
as to his physical remains, entirely out of the sphere of human 
perception ; disappearing or ascending from without inwards, 
exactly as He had descended from within outwards. This was 
" the eternal life " about whom his favorite disciple uses these 
solemn and wonderful words : 



SECOND COMING OF THE LORD, 1 9 

"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, 
which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, 
and our hands have handled, of the Word of life : 

" (For the life was manifested and we have seen it, and bear 
witness and show unto you that eternal life which was with 
the Father and was manifested unto us .•) 

"That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, 
that ye also may have fellowship with us : and truly our fel- 
lowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. ' 9 

The divine love produces the divine wisdom just as heat 
produces light. It was the divine love, in its outflowing 
endeavor to save the human race from hell, that, passing 
through the organic spiritual forms of the Jewish church, 
produced the manifestation of the divine wisdom embodied 
in the person and life of Christ. This divine love was called 
the Father, who was prior, superior, and greater than He; 
from whom He came forth, who sent Him, who gave Him 
every word that He spoke, and who did through Him every- 
thing that was done. " I am in the Father, and the Father 
in me : the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself, 
but the Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works." 

Such was the first coming of the Lord. He was compelled 
to manifest Himself in the lowest or sensuo-corporeal sphere 
of human life, because He had been interiorly rejected and 
could not be manifested through its higher and interior spheres 
of affection and thought. He looked, " and behold ! there 
was no man," no genuine image and likeness of God in the 
world. So He apparently descended because man had de- 
scended, and could only see Him on his own plane. He became 
man in order to restore the broken and desecrated order of 
heaven to humanity, and to make it divine. 



20 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

If He could have found a receptive plane for his influx in 
the affections of that age, it would have produced such people 
as Fenelon, Wesley, and William Law. If He could have 
found a receptive plane for his influx into the thoughts of that 
age, it would have produced a Swedenborg, and the spiritual 
sense of the Word would have been opened, and not merely 
guessed at, as by Paul, Origen, and others. If He could have 
been received at that time in the natural plane of human life, 
all our modern discoveries in science, our political revolutions 
and social advances would have then been possible. But the 
interior degrees of the human race were closed, and it was 
sinking into animalism, and would have perished morally and 
physically, had not the Lord taken on or entered into its lowest 
environments, prepared for Himself a human nature, with its 
infirm human conditions and propensities to evil derived from 
the mother, and perfected and glorified his humanity by the 
conquest of the influent hells, and by the reopening of all the 
closed degrees of life, becoming successively a divine natural, 
divine rational, divine spiritual, and divine celestial man, 
until He and the Father were one, and He had "all power in 
heaven and upon earth. " 

But I find myself, my dear sir, carried away by that most 
sublime and sacred of all themes, the philosophy of the incar- 
nation, and must return to the simpler purpose of this letter, 
which was to show that the three apparent movements of the 
Lord — his coming from the Father, his going back to the 
Father, and his return or second coming to us, were dependent, 
not upon any changes in Himself, but upon his accommodation 
of the divine love and wisdom to the varying spiritual states 
and organic receptivities of his creatures. 

His going away, his returning to the Father, was the eleva- 



SECOND COMING OF THE LORD. 21 

tion of his human states into such a degree of unition with 
the divine love, that our human perceptions and cognitions 
could no longer retain Him. So He passed away from us, 
becoming invisible simply because He was no longer compre- 
hensible, even by the highest finite intelligences. This was 
the lifting up which draws all men unto Him, a state not at- 
tained by the death of the cross, as is commonly supposed, 
but by the far more important death of the selfhood or old 
proprium derived from the mother. We follow Him in the 
regeneration by a similar death of the selfhood and a similar 
elevation of our natural states of life into spiritual states, 
which are " the heavenly places in Christ Jesus " mentioned 
by Paul : " If we have been planted together in the likeness of 
his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection." 

We ourselves "come to the Father/' or attain to states of 
heavenly peace and love, only by Jesus Christ, who is "the 
way, the truth, and the life." The way is the external rule 
or conduct, the truth is the spiritual light or guide, the life is 
the celestial essence or power. It is only by the divine pres- 
ence of the threefold spirit of Christ within ourselves, that 
we enter into union with the Father as He did, and become 
one with Him even as He was one with the Father. These 
heavenly states of life are the many mansions in our Father's 
house — the spiritual places or conditions prepared for us by 
his going away, or by the unition of the human nature with 
the divine. 

Observe, my dear friend, the stress which our Lord lays 
upon the expediency and necessity of his going away : 

"It is expedient for you that I go away ; for if I go not 
away, the Comforter will not come unto you ; but if I depart, 
I will send Him unto you, ' ' 



22 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

" If ye loved me, ye would rejoice because I said, I go unto 
the Father ; for my Father is greater than I." 

" I go to prepare a place for you ; 

11 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, 
and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be 
also. ' ' 

It is clear from these considerations that the race cannot 
be saved so long as the divine life flows through distorted 
mediums into the external sphere of our being, as it did 
through the Jewish church. Nor can even a perfect medium, 
like the Christ, do us any good, so long as He seems to remain 
in our own external sphere, or to operate upon us only in an 
external manner. He must be lifted up into higher and more 
and more interior standpoints, even to his own divine centres, 
or into union with the Father, so that He may come back or 
return from above downwards, from within outwards, and, 
by the spiritual laws of creation, reconstruct and re-create us 
after the model of his own divine image. 

The Divine Being contains within Himself all possible 
states of humanity as to goodness and truth, for He is the 
infinite good, the infinite truth. In the process of his incar- 
nation He never laid aside or lost any of those states ; in the 
process of glorification he never obtained any state which He 
did not have before in infinite fulness. He underwent no 
change at all. But He projected Himself outwardly into visible 
human form, not directly from Himself, but mediately through 
the human race. In that form He bore the sins and iniquities 
of the world ; through it He combated against all the powers 
of hell ; and into it He infused the fulness of the divine life, 
until it passed away from the perceptions and cognitions of 
men. It was a manifestation of Himself, a means of bringing 



SECOND COMING OF THE LORD. 2$ 

us into rapport with Him. The places prepared for us are 
states of goodness and truth which his divine love and power 
have thus opened to us and made possible to us, for He now 
draws all men unto Him. We are where He is, when we can 
appropriate his divine love and wisdom, and conform our wills 
to his will, until we are clothed upon with the spirit of Christ. 
Similarity of thought and feeling makes presence in the spir- 
itual world. 

Our Lord's first coming was only preparatory to the second. 
It was exceedingly limited on the earthly or external side, 
made so by the influx of the divine life through interior 
spheres which repudiated and rejected Him, crucifying his 
divine truth in their own spirits before they condemned his 
external manifestation to the cross. But by the glorification 
or divinization of his assumed humanity, He has elevated our 
states, or so spiritualized our being that states of affection 
and thought, "heavenly places" in our religious life, are 
ready to receive Him at his second coming. It will, there- 
fore, not be a coming from without, as the Christian world 
expects, but a genuine coming or descent from within ; not 
special to one race or religion, but universal ; an influx of a 
divine-human life into the Body of Humanity, which will 
finally purify the affections, illumine the understandings, and 
regulate the conduct of men. 

Every coming of the Lord is, therefore, not a voluntary 
movement on his part, such as we imagine that He made, but 
a revelation to us of his presence, made always according to 
spiritual laws ; for God is the supreme law of laws. It is a 
change within ourselves, which enables us in some manner to 
realize the fact that He is here and is always here — that "open 
secret " which is so hard for us to comprehend. This revela- 



24 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

tion of the Lord occurs with infinitely varying phenomena to 
human souls in the course of their religious experiences and 
regeneration. But all human souls are bound together by 
spiritual laws into a great, invisible solidarity; and in the 
course of the evolution of the race there are mighty epochs 
or crises, caused really by the reaction of the heavens against 
a perverted church and an evil world (" the kingdom of heaven 
suffereth violence"), and accompanied by new influxes, in- 
ternal and external revolutions, the destruction of old and 
the establishment of new orders, revelations of some sorts, or 
rather of many sorts, from within, and the unfolding of a 
better and wiser life in the world. Such epoch or crisis con- 
stitutes a general coming of the Lord. Such phenomena 
occurred in the time of Christ ; and similar phenomena are 
now occurring, and are still to occur, for the Lord has come 
again. 

The historian and the scientist cannot discover the real 
causes of these extraordinary movements of humanity, for those 
causes do not lie upon the same plane or level with their re- 
searches. The dog that hunts with his nose along the ground, 
can never reach the bird that flies in the air over his head. 
The causes are spiritual, and can only be made known by 
revelation ; and they have been revealed through Swedenborg 
for the benefit of the new age which is dawning upon us. 
And if Swedenborg is a star of very small magnitude to some 
people, and entirely out of sight to others, it is only because 
they are too remote from him to recognize his solar immensity. 

From Swedenborg we learn that there is a perfect continuity 
and solidarity of law and life throughout the universe. The 
human race, as a spiritual totality, does not stand alone deriv- 
ing its life from natural sources, but is organically connected 



SECOND COMING OF THE LORD. 2$ 

by internal bonds with the world of spirits, with heaven and 
with hell. Its life is a composite problem, the result of a 
vast series of actions and reactions between the spiritual world 
and the natural world. Every coming of the Lord is therefore 
attended by rearrangements of societies in the heavens and 
the hells ; by judgments executed in the world of spirits and 
repeating themselves in different forms in the world of men ; 
by removal of obstacles from the interior, and a consequently 
greater influx of spiritual heat and light, which are love and 
wisdom, into the hearts and minds of those who are in condi- 
tions to receive them. 

Those disciples of Swedenborg who are teaching that the 
second coming of the Lord consists wholly and solely in the 
revelation of the spiritual sense of the Word, do great injustice 
to Swedenborg and to the Christian world. That is one state- 
ment of Swedenborg, and a reiterated and a most important 
and truthful statement ; but it is not the whole truth. Sweden- 
borg also says that the revelation by angelic spirits of the 
doctrine of the celestial life to certain people in Africa, was 
not only the initiament of the New Church, but the advent 
of the Lord. He also states plainly the universal truth, that 
the formation of the church and the heavenly life in the soul 
constitutes the coming of the Lord ; and moreover, that the 
opening of the interior degrees of life in the regeneration, 
constitutes the coming of the Lord to the individual. 

The better portion of the Christian world turns us a deaf 
ear when we insist that the coming of the Lord is in a new 
system of spiritual doctrine, to be promulgated by a new 
church. It is not looking for doctrines or churches, but for 
the Lord Himself. It will willingly accept new doctrines and 
new churches if they are preceded by the personal presence 
3 



26 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

of the Divine man. And in this it is quite right. We want 
no more authoritative teaching; we question the authority of 
Authority. We care but little at present for outside church- 
building ; we want the church constructed within ourselves. 
We want the Lord : we want to hear his voice ; to see Him 
walking upon the troubled waters of our life ; to touch the 
hem of his garment and be healed ; to put our fingers into 
the print of the nails and to believe. We expect Him to 
fulfil his promises. 

"And when He had spoken these things, while they beheld, 
He was taken up : and a cloud received Him out of their sight. 

"And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven, as He 
went up, behold, two men stood by them i7i white apparel : 

" Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing 
up into heaven ? this same Jesus which is taken up from you 
into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him 
go into heaven." 

Now, my dear sir, the assertion of the two men, who were 
two angels, that Jesus would come again from heaven, "in 
like manner" or under precisely similar conditions, as those 
under which He ascended to heaven, was absolutely and liter- 
ally true. But what was the manner? What were the condi- 
tions? All depends upon a correct conception of the manner 
and the conditions. If our Lord was in the same organic state 
He occupied before his crucifixion; if the disciples were in 
their normal, closed condition of life ; if a material body really 
disappeared in a material cloud ; then is the Christian world 
perfectly justified in expecting the Lord to descend through 
natural space in a material form, and meet us and judge us on 
the lowest or sensuo-corporeal plane of life, however prepos- 
terous and incomprehensible such a proceeding might appear. 



SECOND COMING OF THE LORD. 2J 

But there is a very different and perfectly rational way of 
interpreting the phenomenon. There is a coming from within 
far more sublime and effective, because universal and special, 
than any coming from without, like a king marching from one 
country to another, ever could be. He is to come from within, 
because He passed from without inwards. Our Lord's glori- 
fied body was never seen by the natural eyes of men; but all 
his appearances or manifestations after his resurrection were 
projections from and through the minds of his disciples into 
apparent time and space, made according to spiritual laws, 
with which m the experience of Swedenborg and others have 
now made us familiar. 

The disciples, no doubt, told the story precisely as it ap- 
peared to their senses. They knew nothing, however, of the 
difference between spiritual and natural senses. They did not 
know that their spiritual senses were open, and that they 
were witnessing a scene which was transpiring in a spiritual 
sphere and not in the world of nature. They thought, no 
doubt, that if all the Jews and Romans had been present they 
would have seen the same things. They had forgotten the 
Lord's words — " in a little while the world shall see me no 
more; but ye see me." 

The disciples were held in comparatively open or internal 
states by the angelic spheres about the Lord, for the purposes 
of divine manifestations and revelation. But when their own 
hereditary sphere reacted against the internal sphere, it re- 
ceded, and the disciples were left in their natural and external 
states. Our Lord disappeared from them because their states 
of affection and thought were too gross and material to main- 
tain that spiritual rapport which induces presence. He seemed 
to ascend up, because they were not able to follow Him into 



28 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

the high spiritual state into which the glorification of his 
human nature had lifted Him. " Whither I go," He said, 
"thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me 
afterwards. ' ' 

He was concealed from them by a cloud, because it is the 
cloud of our own natural thought and life, which conceals the 
spiritual world with all its transcendent issues from us. It is 
the cloud of the letter of the Word which to-day conceals the 
infinite treasures of divine truth from the church and the 
world. When He comes again, therefore, He must come into 
these clouds. "Behold, He cometh with clouds.' ' He has 
so come again ; He has illumined the clouds of the letter of 
the Word with the radiance of heavenly wisdom. He is even 
now descending into the clouds of our natural and sensuous 
life, bringing us into judgment, revealing Himself to us in 
innumerable ways, according to our faith and our own states 
of reception, and thus preparing a new heaven and a new 
earth, or entirely new spiritual conditions both internal and 
external, for his presence and perpetual reign among men. 

Returning now to the first paragraph in this letter, you can 
see its assertion in a better light. It was the closing or shut- 
ting up of our souls to influx from within, that has sunk us 
into our present closed natural and sensuous states. The su- 
preme condition of our Lord's reappearance, or second com- 
ing, is the reopening of the degrees of our spiritual life as to 
its affections, its thoughts, and its sensations. It is, therefore, 
always a matter of personal experience. The possibilities of 
the unfoldings from within in each of these discrete degrees, 
are incalculable. They constitute the new things of the com- 
ing era, when the Lord will "make all things new." The open- 
ing of the spiritual degree of the understanding in Sweden- 



SECOND COMING OF THE LORD. 2<) 

borg has given us a flood of new and precious light from the 
Divine Word, and tapped a vein of spiritual truth which is 
absolutely inexhaustible. The opening of the sphere of the 
affections to the divine influx ("behold, I stand at the door 
and knock ! ") will bring the life of the heavens down upon 
the earth. The opening of the spiritual senses is a subject too 
vast and solemn, and too little comprehended, for vague specu- 
lation. We must patiently await its evolution and develop- 
ment. The opening of these interior degrees of life to the 
reception of the Divine influx, will constitute the real and 
special coming of the Lord, which, when universal, will be 
his living presence — something like a re-incarnation of Him- 
self — in the Body of Humanity. 

That innumerable Herods professing to be in search of the 
true King, will endeavor to strangle this revolutionary Christ, 
there cannot be a particle of doubt. 

Yours, truly, 

W. H. H. 

3* 



LETTER II. 

THREE DEGREES OF HUMAN LIFE : CELESTIAL, 
SPIRITUAL, AND NATURAL. 



M 



Y DEAR SIR: — It will aid you immensely in compre- 
hending both the individual phenomena and the his- 
torical phases of the religious or spiritual life, if you 
will master (and it is easily done) the meaning of the three 
terms, celestial, spiritual, and natural, in the Swedenborgian 
philosophy. I will, therefore, give you a few hints on the 
subject. 

First, notice hastily how the law of three degrees runs 
through all things. In every object we have the degrees of 
dimension, length, breadth, and thickness. In natural sub- 
stances there are solids, liquids, and gases ; and again land, 
air, and water. Organized forms are in three kingdoms, min- 
eral, vegetable, and animal. In philosophy there are three 
terms which include all things, end, cause, and effect. In 
man there are will, understanding, and conduct ; affection, 
thought, and sensation. In the Divine, there are Love, Wisdom, 
and Power, signified by the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
Ghost. There are three heavens with entirely different phe- 
nomena; and three senses of the Divine Word within and 
above the letter, each sense adapted to its special heaven. 
These trines and their relationships involve and include all 
things. The doctrine of three degrees and their organic con- 

30 



THREE DEGREES OF HUMAN LIFE. 3 1 

nection with each other, is the key to the philosophy of the 
universe. 

It is a trite saying that human nature is everywhere and at 
all times the same. It is true that all men differ in the same 
respects from animals. All men have similar appetites also, 
and similar faculties of observation and reason, and a similar 
natural basis of affection, thought, and sensation. But the 
interior structures and operations of the souls of men differ 
so immensely, that we may say there are three different kinds 
or grades of human nature. These three degrees of human 
life stand so far apart from each other, that after death when 
similar spiritual affinities draw souls together, and dissimilar 
qualities drive them apart, men and women who even seemed 
alike in the natural world, are separated by impassable gulfs 
of organic incompatibility. They go into different degrees 
and different societies of heaven or hell ; and the question is 
so purely one of acquired spiritual organization, that one soul 
can no more permanently change places with another, than a 
fish can take a bird's place in the air, or the bird take the 
fish's place in the water. 

Every man has three degrees of life, or rather the organic 
forms capable of receiving and manifesting it, concealed 
within his external organization. He is, therefore, an image 
of all the heavens, differing therein entirely from animals, 
which have only the external organization and a sensuo-cor- 
poreal life with its various instincts and appetites. 

Man begins with a merely animal life, and the interior de- 
grees are gradually opened and formed in him by instruction, 
education, revelation, and the spiritual experiences of the 
regenerating process. The differences between men and races 
of men, and between ancient and modern men and races, 



32 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

depend largely upon the extent to which these three human 
natures have been unfolded within them. This is a chief 
cause of sympathies, antipathies, coalitions, and misunder- 
standings among men. One person does not understand 
another nor sympathize with him, not only because of the 
obvious differences on the same plane, but because interiorly 
he stands upon an entirely different plane of life. The natu- 
ral man judges all other men from his own standpoint. The 
motives, principles, affections, thoughts, and conduct of the 
spiritual and the celestial man are mysteries to him. The 
former he frequently calls a fanatic and the latter a fool, and 
both are objects of his incredulity or his contempt. 

The natural man derives his wisdom from the light of na- 
ture alone, and is governed by the evidence of his senses. 
He loves himself supremely, whether he knows it or not, and 
even his love for his children, relatives, neighbors, and coun- 
try, is another form of self-love. He loves the world, its 
pleasures, and its possessions. He desires to be elevated in 
all respects above his fellows. Pleasure, fashion, reputation, 
wealth, power, are his idols. His motives are all interested, 
his ends are thoroughly utilitarian, having reference only to 
the things of this life. If he is civil, honest, temperate, chaste, 
industrious, as he often is, it is because he feels it is safest, 
wisest, and best for him to be so. When the general interest 
coincides with his own interest he is capable of being an ad- 
mirable neighbor, philanthropist, and patriot. The evolutions 
of social and civilized life may make him a gentleman of the 
most delicate sentiment and refined culture. He throws his 
weight into the scale of law and order, because there is peace, 
comfort, and progress under their powerful protection. 

Now these states of life and character, evolved and evolv- 



THREE DEGREES OF HUMAN LIFE. 33 

ing upon the natural plane or degree of the human mind, 
have nothing whatever of a spiritual quality about them. It 
is not only possible, but highly probable, that the evolution 
of an advanced grade of civilization on these natural princi- 
ples will take place finally in all the hells. It is the assertive, 
aggressive, self-derived, competitive civilization of the self- 
hood or proprium. Its spirit, at the bottom of all appear- 
ances to the contrary, is the spirit of hell — for the hell here- 
after is only the consociated states, and the corresponding 
environment, of all those who have loved themselves and the 
world instead of the Lord and the neighbor. 

You will perhaps understand me better when I say, that 
we repudiate entirely the old ecclesiastical idea that hell is a 
place prepared by God for the punishment of sin. Every 
man makes and voluntarily seeks his own hell. Men after 
death as well as before it, and according to the same spiritual 
laws, enter into social and governmental organizations ; selfish 
and unregenerate men gravitate together, and form societies 
as they do here, each individual striving to rule or exploit 
the rest, and their punishment is nothing but the continued 
miseries which their own evil natures inflict upon themselves 
and each other. They are in the same interior states there 
that they were here, and so far as living men are in the love 
of self and the world, so far they are virtually in hell, whether 
they know it and feel it or not. The business of religion is 
not so much to prevent us from going to hell, as to deliver us 
from the hell we are already in. 

Do not be astonished, my dear sir, when I tell you that this 
natural man is sometimes exceedingly religious (without a 
spark of genuine spirituality), and spends an enormous amount 
of money, enough every year to relieve all the real distress 

C 



34 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

in the world, on churches, ministers, missionaries, agencies, 
books, papers, etc., etc. But, in becoming religious, he does 
not rise above his old level. He is as selfish, dogmatic, am- 
bitious, and competitive in his religion as in his business. 
The hope of reward and the fear of punishment are his chief 
motives, those selfish motives which we bring to bear success- 
fully in the training of animals and children. He yields wil- 
lingly and gracefully, as if he was performing the chief duty 
of man, to the combined pressure of ecclesiastical authority, 
social demands, and hereditary usages. He does not seek for 
truth to illumine his understanding, but for miracles to com- 
pel belief. If Christian, he is perfectly satisfied with the 
literal sense of the Word of God, because he cannot think of 
spiritual things in any but a natural or literal manner. One 
form of this natural mind contends vigorously for purity of 
doctrine, and is exceedingly zealous for the church and its 
ordinances ; another form aspires after distinguished pieties 
and sanctities, striving, like the sons of Zebedee, to be first 
in the kingdom of heaven. 

Now this ecclesiastical religion, this professional morality, 
this righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, is the religion, 
under a thousand different forms, of nine-tenths of the human 
race. It involves no fundamental organic change of charac- 
ter, but is a life of compelled obedience and of suppressed, 
not renovated, selfhood. Yet the sincere, natural Christian 
is capable of unfolding, after death, into the spiritual man. 
The organized institutions of this natural religion, claiming 
to be spiritual, are the greatest obstructions to the Coming 
of the Lord and the development of the new life in the world. 
They have the advantage of enormous majorities and the pres- 
tige of many centuries of intense literalism. They will cling 



THREE DEGREES OF HUMAN LIFE. 35 

with the tenacity of self-preservation to the old formulas and 
the old issues, until the imaginary heavens in which they have 
entrenched themselves shall flee away forever from the face 
of the Lord; "for He cometh, for He cometh to judge the 
earth.' ' 

So much for the natural type of man, religious and irrelig- 
ious. Now there are some celestial men in the world, and a 
great many more spiritual mien, and always have been \ and 
the number of both is about to increase in a wonderful man- 
ner. But engrave, my dear sir, very deeply upon your mind 
this fundamental fact in regard to spiritual evolution : that no 
possible extensions or amplifications of the goodness and wis- 
dom of the natural man, on his own plane of life, can ever 
develop the spiritual or celestial type of being. Paul under- 
stood this very clearly when he declared that a man might be 
perfect in all knowledge, have faith which could remove 
mountains, benevolence to give all his possessions to the poor, 
and the courage of martyrdom for his religion, and yet have 
nothing of that true charity or divine love in the soul which 
constitutes the life of heaven. 

Now what is the key to this seeming paradox? It is the 
wonderful secret of the New Birth. When a man from natural 
becomes spiritual, he passes from death into life \ he is born 
again ; he has a new nature, not his old natural disposition 
modified this way or that, but absolutely a " new creature," 
given to him from above. This new, higher, discretely differ- 
ent grade of human nature lives and works from standpoints 
of affection and thought unknown to the natural man. A 
divine altruism or love of others has displaced the self-love 
of the " old man." He is no longer governed by self-inter- 
est and natural conceptions of duty, but by conscience or 



$6 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

spiritual conceptions of duty. Natural appetites and passions 
have no power over him. On the contrary he has absolute 
power over them, and subordinates the natural entirely to the 
uses and service of the spiritual life. His neighbor, the church, 
the country, the Lord's kingdom, are always first and foremost 
in his affections and thoughts ; self and self-interest being 
always remanded to the last and lowest place. 

Now this spiritual man is not born of flesh and blood, but 
of the will of God. It is a new conception, between the love 
and obedience of a man to natural truth as a mother, and 
spiritual good inflowing from above as a father. This new 
birth is the product of the conjunction between a lower and 
a higher discrete degree of life. There was a point somewhere 
in the mineral kingdom, when some form of it was impreg- 
nated by the vegetable soul above it, and the plant evolved 
into being. There was a point somewhere in the vegetable 
kingdom, when forms were prepared for the influx of the 
animal soul, and animated nature was the result. There was 
a point in the animal sphere, perhaps now undiscoverable, 
when impregnation from a higher, living, loving, reasoning 
degree of life (the human) took place, and Man was created. 

This first man or first Adam is the natural man whom I have 
described. The new man or the second Adam is "the Lord 
from heaven/ ' because it is the divine life communicated to 
us from a higher plane, and making us " Sons of God." We 
here approach logically that solemn mystery, the birth of Jesus 
from the virgin Mary. It was only through a virgin form that 
the divine uncreated life itself could become immanent in the 
world as a human being. Then by successive openings of .aq 
interior degrees in Himself, by successive new births or as- 
censions, progressive unions of the Son with the Father, from 



THREE DEGREES OF HUMAN LIFE. $? 

sensuo-corporeal He became natural, from natural spiritual, 
from spiritual celestial, from celestial Divine — and so, neither 
Father nor Son, but a Divine Man, from beginning to end, 
from first to last, the Alpha and the Omega, including 
and involving all degrees of life in his own divine-human 
person. 

The natural man finds it difficult to understand the unfold- 
ing of the spiritual nature ; but the celestial nature, born of 
spiritual truth as a mother and of celestial good as a father, is 
something still more incomprehensible. Even the spiritual 
man finds it difficult to comprehend the celestial character. 
The natural man is in the sphere of science and its practical 
utilities ; the spiritual man is in the sphere of truth, and es- 
pecially of the spiritual uses of the Divine Word ; the celestial 
man is in the sphere of love, and its outflowing activities to- 
wards the whole human race. The natural Christian delights 
more especially in the church, its ordinances, and its in- 
fluences: the spiritual man delights more especially in the 
Word, its correspondences, and its infinite applications to the 
needs of the spiritual life : the celestial man lives in the per- 
sonal atmosphere of the Lord, and in a state of perfect coin- 
cidence of his own will with the Divine will. His life is truly 
" hid with Christ in God." All these forms or degrees are 
necessary to a perfected world upon which all three heavens 
may rest. 

• The natural and the spiritual man are in states of combat 
and temptation, resisting evil, organizing for good, with more 
or less of the old selfhood or proprium mingled and per- 
haps concealed in their best feelings and best works. The 
celestial man has laid down the life of self, and is clothed upon 
with the spirit of Christ. He is in states of supreme peace, 
4 



38 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

and is always the peacemaker. He thinks no evil, does no 
evil ; " for whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin." 
He has no sense of interest, or duty, or conscience, such as 
men in the lower degrees have. The law of the Lord is writ- 
ten on his heart, and he lives out all the divine commands as 
spontaneously as the bird sings. He has no concealments, no 
prevarications, no self-interests to serve. His life is a simple 
yea, yea, or nay, nay. He has no enemies to forgive, for he 
regards every human being with unchangeable tenderness and 
love. He perceives truth by a certain intuition unknown to 
others ; for he that doeth the will of the Lord shall know of 
his doctrine. He is in that heavenly state of life, the inno- 
cence of wisdom, typified by Jesus when " He took a little child 
and set him in their midst. ' ' His coming is predicted in many 
wonderful and beautiful passages in the prophets. 

Ancient history, as distinguished from modern history, can- 
not be understood, unless it is known that three successive 
manifestations of the religious life, celestial, spiritual, and 
natural, succeeded each other from the creation of man to the 
time of Christ. The laws and phenomena of those different 
dispensations, the causes and effect of their decline and termi- 
nation, are all unfolded in the voluminous works of Sweden- 
borg, which contain treasures of knowledge for the philosopher 
and the Christian, to which the unearthed relics of Troy and 
Babylon and Egypt are mere baubles. And yet they lie un- 
discovered or ignored, mainly because men stand at the thresh- 
old, and in the irrational spirit of the dead past exclaim, 
" We will not accept or even examine his teachings, unless he 
first gives us some miraculous attestation of his authority.' ' 

The Incarnation of Jehovah in the person of Jesus Christ is 
the central fact of human history, organically connected with 



THREE DEGREES OF HUMAN LIFE. 39 

everything that preceded and with everything that has followed 
it. It was the successive closure of the interior degrees of 
the human mind, celestial, spiritual, and natural, successively 
cutting off the influx from the heavens, and the impending 
descent into animalism and destruction, which necessitated 
the assumption of our infirm and finite humanity by the Di- 
vine Being. Jesus Christ, necessarily conceived at the time as 
"the Son of God," was a prepared human form into which 
the Divine life, called the Father, flowed in such a manner, 
that, starting from our own sensuo-corporeal basis, He opened 
successively all the interior degrees which had been closed, 
and by successive unions of the lower with the higher degree 
(the Son ascending to the Father), He became a divine-natural, 
divine-spiritual, and divine-celestial Man, having all power in 
heaven and earth. Henceforth the reopening of the heavens 
to man became possible. By rapport with this Divine Man, 
through faith, prayer, love, obedience, and perfect coincidence 
of wills, we may become spiritual and celestial again. 

This is a good opportunity to explain more clearly what is 
meant by the descent of the Lord into ultimates. Ultimates 
are not the last things in a series on the same plane, like the 
last object in a row of objects, or the last country reached in 
a course of travel. Ultimates, in philosophical language, are 
the last or lowest things which contain within their forms all 
the superior and prior things of the series. Thus a man's 
conduct is the ultimate act which includes the causes of 
the act and the motives which induced the man to set the 
causes into operation. Affections and thoughts are thus ulti- 
mated into actions. The physical universe is the ultimate of 
the spiritual universe concealed within it. The body is the 
ultimate of the soul concealed within it. The literal sense 



4-0 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

of the Word is an ultimate containing spiritual and celestial 
senses concealed within it. 

The descent of the Lord into ultimates means, therefore, 
that the divine life is now strongly influent into the celestial, 
spiritual, and natural degrees, awakening, vivifying, and har- 
monizing the affections, thoughts, and conduct of angels, 
spirits, and men ; so that finally the church in heaven and the 
church upon earth will make one, and the Lord's will be done 
upon earth even as it is in heaven. 

Believe me, my dear sir, the Lord Jesus Christ with his 
holy angels, which mean heavenly states of life such as angels 
enjoy, is now immanent in the world. 

Yours, truly, 

W. H. H. 



LETTER III. 

THE THREE-FOLD APPEARANCE OF THE LORD. 



M' 



Y DEAR SIR:— The idea of a triune God, which 
pervades most ancient religions, and which appears as 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in the Christian system, 
was generated in the three-fold structure of the human mind 
by the influx of the one, indivisible, divine life into it. In 
the celestial degree God appears to us as the divine love, a 
divine presence in the heart and the affections. In the spir- 
itual degree He appears as the divine wisdom, the eternal 
truth, the sleepless intelligence governing the universe by im- 
mutable laws. In the natural degree He appears as the divine 
power ultimating itself in all the forms and forces of the 
physical world. 

When the ancients, through successive degradations of the 
religious life, lost the interior light of truth, they sank into 
the natural degree of affection and thought, and deified the 
powers of nature, the sun, moon, stars, light, fire, etc., etc. 
The gods and goddesses of antiquity were the Divinity dis- 
sected into parts and invested with human shapes, the conse- 
quence of the loss of the great spiritual idea that God is in 
the Human Form. The Human Form is as different from the 
human shape as the form of government is different from the 
form of the man who rules, or as the body politic differs from 
the body of an individual. Our Lord laid aside the human 
shape with the infirmities He derived from the mother, but 
4* 4i 



42 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

He exists in an infinite divine-human form, the absolute ex- 
pression of the divine love, wisdom, and power. That the 
entire Godhead is immanent in the glorified person of Jesus 
Christ, is the last, highest, most fruitful result of the evolution 
of theological truth. 

This one God manifests Himself to all his creatures in the 
universe under an infinite variety of forms, names, and cir- 
cumstances. In other words, God always appears to us ac- 
cording to our own states. There is no such thing as a false 
God or an idol, but only mean, false, inadequate conceptions 
of God in the minds of men. God is as truly present in the 
Chinese pagoda and the Hindoo temple, as He is in the Cath- 
olic cathedral or the Quaker meeting-house. He accepts all 
worship from the heart, and accommodates Himself alike to 
the highest and the lowest states. The idols of wood and 
stone which we are all even now worshipping, are self, the 
world, pleasure, money, fashion, and power. The heathen 
are in far more salvable conditions than we ; and alas ! for 
the self-righteous that think otherwise. Beautiful and tender 
are the utterances of Swedenborg about the heathen. The 
doctrinals, the morals, and even the idols of the upright gen- 
tiles, are accepted by the Lord, and left whole to them as the 
vessels of celestial things which they are qualified by charity 
to receive. — A. C. 1832, 421 1. Those who have worshipped 
idols and yet lived in charity, easily receive the goods and 
truths of faith in the other life ; and they are not instantly de- 
prived of what they have esteemed holy from infancy, but are 
weaned from their delusions by degrees. — A. C. 1992, 9972. 

In God there is "no variableness or shadow of turning," 
but we ourselves form different conceptions of Him and in- 
vest Him with different qualities and attributes according as 
our standpoints are natural, spiritual, or celestial. Let us 



THREE-FOLD APPEARANCE OF THE LORD. 43 

glance a moment at the different forms which the Divine Be- 
ing is made to assume by transmission through the different 
degrees or planes of the human soul. 

If the interior degrees, spiritual and celestial, are closed, 
and the influx is only into the natural degree, man conceives 
of God as a being like himself, only vastly greater and more 
powerful. He is a mighty King, conservative of his power, 
jealous of his authority, who rewards his friends and pun- 
ishes his enemies, who makes laws for the government of his 
people, and who opens heaven or hell according as his com- 
passion or his indignation is excited. This kind of a God 
builds churches or temples wherein He demands that He shall 
be worshipped ; issues commands to be obeyed, and promul- 
gates creeds which his people are to believe, ordains priests 
and other ecclesiastical powers which are to be duly respected, 
extends his conquests and condemns to hell all who reject 
Him as the supreme ruler. This was the God of the Jews ; and 
the Christian religion, as interpreted by many of its disciples, 
retains some melancholy traces of this anthropomorphic deity. 

When the rational degree is opened, which is intermediate 
between the natural and the spiritual, the mind rises into the 
conception of inflexible laws and immutable order. It sees 
God in an abstract manner, and shrinks from any personal or 
concrete conception of Him. If the rational man leans to 
the natural side, he generates the natural utilitarian religion 
of Spencer or Comte. If he leans to the spiritual side, he 
views God as the Supreme Intelligence, governing the world 
with love and wisdom \ and if he accepts revelation, he be- 
holds God as the Divine Truth, unveiling itself more or less 
clearly to the human understanding in a written Word. If 
this degree is freely opened, without a corresponding opening 
of the celestial degree above it, we have a cold, hard, barren, 



44 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

intellectual religion, based upon rigid conceptions of right 
and duty. 

The God of the celestial man, or to speak philosophically, 
God as seen from the celestial degree, contains within Him- 
self all that is true and beautiful in the lower degrees, and a 
great deal more. He is " the way, the truth, and the life: 7 ' 
the way, because He governs in the least of external things as 
in the greatest ; the truth, because He is the divine wisdom, 
the source of all intelligence; the life, because his divine 
fatherly love is the uncreated life which He gives freely and 
abundantly to all who seek Him. 

This God will hide Himself from you if you try to make Him 
a King, because He wishes to be your Father and to give you 
the kingdom. He never judges or condemns even the most 
wicked. He never punishes, or resents, or revenges. He is 
always " meek and lowly of heart." His constant, unceasing 
effort is to give and to bless. He will reveal Himself, He 
will explain Himself to you in the sweetest, humblest manner. 
He will take your children in his arms ; He will weep with 
you at your friend's grave; yea, if He can instruct you even 
in little things, he will gird Himself and wash your feet. 
He will suffer and die for you, and bear your infirmities for- 
ever, if He can only have you where He is, and crown you 
with his love. 

This, my dear sir, is the God of the New Jerusalem, " the 

same Jesus ' ' who is now returning to the earth by opening 

the interior degrees of our life. He is now moving from inmost 

to outmost, and He will eventually fill the tabernacle of our 

lives, the temple and its outer court, and even the whole city 

with his presence. 

Yours truly, 

W. H. H. 



LETTER IV. 



THE LORD AS PHYSICIAN: " WHO HEALETH ALL THY 

DISEASES." 



Vl 



Y DEAR SIR: — I said in one of my letters that the 
Lord at his second coming would reorganize society, 
and reconstruct even the elements of nature ; that He 
would direct all enterprises, transact all business, and cure all 
diseases; and this without infringing in the least upon the 
free agency, rationality, and individuality of any human 
being. You are deeply interested in the so-called "faith- 
cures" and "mind-cures," and desire some more explicit 
declaration of opinion as to the operation of the Lord in the 
cure of disease. 

In the first place, let us understand clearly who this Lord is, 
from whom these wonderful things are to be expected. He 
is not the infinite, omnipotent, omnipresent God, conceived 
of as a Supreme Being separate from the person of Jesus 
Christ. Nor is it Jesus Christ as a vastly superior Man, sep- 
arate from the infinite, omnipresent, omnipotent God. The 
coming Healer of the nations is God revealed and manifested 
in the person of Jesus Christ. " No man hath seen God at 
any time : the only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the 
Father, He hath declared Him." We know nothing whatever 
of God outside of Jesus Christ, who has made Him visible to 
us. " He that seeth me, seeth Him that sent me." 

45 



46 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

The second coming of the Lord is therefore a reappearance 
of the Divine Man to us; the coming from heaven, under 
certain conditions, of " this same Jesus' ' who was taken up 
into heaven from his disciples. He never would have disap- 
peared from his people if their interior states of affection and 
thought, or of love and wisdom, had been such as could have 
retained and utilized his presence amongst them. So -long as 
they kept to their first love, and the strong, personal faith in 
Him as a Divine Man having all power in heaven and earth, 
they cured diseases, performed miracles, and were blessed 
with interior vision and spiritual gifts of a marvelous nature. 
These things all disappeared, not because they were no longer 
needed, but because the church sank into dead, natural, closed 
conditions in which they were impossible. 

The Lord, who has been dead and buried in the church for 
so many centuries, has risen again. It is the same Jesus who 
healed " every sickness and every disease among the people, " 
in the towns and villages of Judea and Galilee. The Mary 
of our hearts, ransomed from her degradation, hears his voice 
and recognizes the Master; and some have " seen a vision of 
angels," who have told them that He is not only living, but is 
here in our midst. He has made Himself known to some of 
us in the breaking of bread, when we received Him into the 
house of our soul and prayed Him to abide with us. Some 
of us have witnessed that miraculous draught of fishes, and 
seen the great net of the Word unbroken. ' Many, shut up in 
their own minds for fear of the unbelieving, scornful world, 
have felt Him enter from within, and reveal Himself to them 
as a Man — divine even as to his flesh and his bones, to whom 
all things were possible — and breathe upon them the Holy 
Ghost, or the living spirit of his own divinely human love. 



THE LORD AS PHYSICIAN. 47 

Christ is within us or nowhere. " Neither shall they say, 
Lo, here ! or lo, there ! for behold ! the kingdom of God is 
within you." Christ, immanent again in the sensuo-corporeal 
sphere of humanity, can cure all diseases, forgive all sins, 
renovate all natures ; because He occupies the inmost stand- 
point to work from, and can move downwards and outwards, 
from centres to circumferences, moulding all things to his 
heavenly will, according as the interior doors of the heart are 
opened for his admission, and the organic conditions are pro- 
vided for the manifestations of his power. 

Our Lord, by virtue of his own Divine Humanity, is now 
opening the interior doors of the three degrees of the human 
mind, celestial, spiritual, and natural, and descending through 
them into the Body of our Humanity, in such a manner that 
He will manifest Himself in innumerable forms of love, wis- 
dom, and power, according to the organic states and recep- 
tivities of his creatures. He is immanent in all the progressive 
movements of the age, good or evil, for He comes like the 
sun to all alike. He is in the grand cathedral, in the faith- 
cure, in the Methodist camp-meeting, in the merchant's ex- 
change, in the Salvation-army, in all places alike. He is with 
the temperate and the intemperate, with the chaste and the 
unchaste. He is with the agnostic, the rationalist, the sensu- 
alist, the nihilist. He is no respecter of persons — He is the 
same to all. But He comes for judgment, and He permits 
every man to judge himself and to choose his own final con- 
dition. To those who receive Him, and assimilate his flesh 
and blood to their own organisms, He is a revelation of life 
and salvation. This is the "manifestation of the sons of 
God.'' To those who repudiate, reject, and pervert his influ- 
ent sphere, He is a revelation of death and destruction. The 



48 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

outcome of every man's life and thought at this moment, 
whether he knows it or not, is the life of Jesus Christ modified 
in his passage through the structures of the man's mind and 
the tissues of his body; for " in Him we live and move and 
have our being. ' ' 

The Lord now stands in the ultimates, or the last and lowest 
things of the human mind, in such a manner that the evil 
spheres, which are the causes of all moral and physical dis- 
ease, can be made to recede from his presence. The sensualist 
and the drunkard, convicted of sin and full of self-loathing, 
may now come to Him with supreme faith that He will take 
away all their evil appetites, and give them absolute power 
over the lusts of the flesh. There is no sin, no infirmity of 
spirit, no frailty of temper, which will not pass away when He 
enters to abide in the hearts of his children. The state of 
Christian perfection is no idle dream. It is the simplest and 
most feasible of all realities. It will soon be a supreme ne- 
cessity with us ; for, as the sphere of judgment descends, the 
conjoint worship of God and Mammon will no longer be per- 
mitted. 

When our Lord was upon earth in a material body, He 
cured diseases by taking on or assuming the spiritual state of 
the diseased persons. This was done in the infirm humanity 
derived from the mother. From that standpoint He entered 
into spiritual combat with the evil sphere which caused the 
disease, and cast it out into the hells, leaving the released 
victim free from the infestation, and restored to physical health. 
It is commonly supposed that Christ had merely to speak the 
word of power and the miraculous changes took place. But 
it is not so ; every step of his victorious progress was achieved 
by assuming the spheres of the afflicted, and contending for 



THE LORD AS PHYSICIAN. 49 

them against the combined power of the hells. This was the 
end of the incarnation, and this is the method of our salva- 
tion. We cast ourselves in faith upon Him : He assumes our 
interior states: He fights and conquers for us, removes the 
causes of our trouble, and restores us to conditions of moral 
and physical order. 

" When the even was come, they brought unto Him many that 
were possessed with devils, and He cast out the spirits with 
his word, and healed all that were sick : 

(( That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the 
prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities and bare our 
sicknesses. ' ' 

The Lord in his glorified body cannot be directly approached 
or tempted by evil spirits ; but as He descends through pre- 
pared vessels into the body of humanity, He will obtain 
through his mediatorial children such an organic foothold in 
the world, that He can repeat mediately through them the 
wonderful works which He performed immediately from his 
divine sphere when He walked the earth. "He that believeth 
on me, the works that I do shall he do also. ' ' 

When our Lord, Himself an infinite and divine Man, enters 
into our mental sphere to abide and to reign, transforming us 
to his image, so that we are truly " clothed, upon with Christ; M 
then, my dear sir, "the redemption of the body " for which 
the whole creation groaneth, is a logical and inevitable neces- 
sity. The body in its largest sense is the physical universe, 
of which the spiritual universe is the soul. In its restricted 
sense it is the sensuo-corporeal sphere of our life with its ex- 
ternal environments. As the Lord enters into these, through 
the regenerated souls of men, all things in the lower sphere 
will be brought into rapport and correspondence with all 
5 D 



50 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

things in the higher sphere ; for the regenerate forms of the 
human mind are, as Swedenborg expresses it, " the gateway 
between the Divine and nature. " 

Swedenborg says that the soul creates its own body, shaping 
every one of its tissues and organs to its own spiritual forms 
and uses, moving the atoms as it pleases, even as the chess- 
player moves the figures on his board. Physiologists, who 
cannot comprehend or accept this great general truth which 
involves and explains a thousand minor truths, still acknowl- 
edge that the soul has a most extraordinary influence on the 
body. The emotions not only produce muscular contractions 
and blood changes, but they modify all the secretions and 
organic functions as powerfully as any medicines have been 
known to do. In this way the scientist explains the miracles 
of Christ, the faith-cures of all ages, and many inexplicable 
spiritual phenomena. "They are," he says, "the physiolog- 
ical effects of mental states, faith, hope, imagination, and 
expectation.' ' 

When to these effects of the soul upon its own body, we 
add the wonderful power of the mesmeric or magnetic opera- 
tions of one mind upon the mind and the body of another 
person, we begin to simplify our conception of the spiritual 
cure of disease. The divine life flows to us through the media 
of angels and spirits. When the interior structures of our 
being are in harmony with the media, the divine life passes 
through into us ; and being the great constructive and pre- 
servative force of the universe, it adapts itself to the little 
universe within ourselves, and proceeds, as far as possible, to 
repel heterogeneous or evil influences, and to rebuild, as it 
were, our organic structures into the form and order of the 
interior life. This would bring all our external forms into 



THE LORD AS PHYSICIAN. SI 

perfect anatomical and physiological relations, the result of 
which would be perfect health. And this would be no miracle 
or violation of natural laws, but the effect of forces moving 
from within, and acting strictly according to the most beauti- 
ful spiritual laws of which we have hitherto been ignorant. 

Laws, both spiritual and natural, are always potential, but 
conditions must be provided for their manifestation. God is 
Law, and never acts outside of it or against it. What are 
called the divine laws or commandments are really the organic 
laws of his own being, the modes of his existence \ and we are 
obliged to keep or obey them, if we would grow like Him 
and be where He is. They are the conditions of our union 
with Him. The laws of nature are only spiritual laws trans- 
lated into natural terms or forms. Obedience to spiritual and 
natural laws is therefore the first absolute condition to the 
manifestation of the divine life or health in both soul and 
body. Every deviation brings spiritual and natural disease. 
Spiritual sanitation is obedience to spiritual law, as natural 
sanitation is obedience to natural law. When these laws and 
their mutual organic connections are discovered and univer- 
sally obeyed, the race will attain its maximum of moral and 
physical health, and our bodies become prepared for the in- 
dwelling of the Holy Spirit. 

But we are still in the region of general principles, and 
you ask for special applications. Can the Lord Jesus Christ, 
entering from within, cure diseases to-day, just as surely and 
promptly as He did by the external touch when He lived in 
the world ? Those who believe that He cured diseases upon 
earth, will find it exceedingly difficult to give any good reason 
why He cannot cure them now, when He is "the same Jesus" 
raised to higher states and more interior powers. The radical 



52 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

cause of their doubt or unbelief seems to be their false im- 
pression, that heaven and the Lord are far off, separated from 
us by some impassable gulf, bridged only by prayer. Nor do 
they know that the kingdom of heaven within us is founded 
upon the solidarity or organic connection of all created intel- 
ligences : nor that the Lord as an infinite divine Man, holds 
the central place in the inmost forms, above our consciousness 
or comprehension, of all human beings in this and all worlds, 
infusing into them a vital force as real and powerful as the 
virtue He felt go out from Him when the diseased woman so 
trustingly touched the hem of his garment. 

You must, however, carry along with you the fact, that the 
Lord has been always the vital agent at the bottom of every 
cure of disease from the beginning of the world. Natural 
laws, as I have said before, are only the expressions of the 
Divine Mind in the physical sphere. Their operation is for 
an infinite series of uses, or useful ends, guided by the divine 
love and wisdom. The same infinite foresight which provides 
the seed for the food of man, provides the medicinal plant 
for his cure. The Lord works in two ways, immediately and 
mediately : immediately when He flows with his own divine 
human sphere under fixed conditions into prepared forms: 
mediately, when He flows through the forms and forces of 
nature, including the operation of one living being upon 
another ; for, as a great writer has observed ' • the physician 
begins to medicate his patient by his personal influence, so 
soon as he enters the room." We may therefore safely say 
that the Lord " healeth all our diseases/' and there is no ex- 
ception to the law ; for although his personal presence is the 
supreme and perfect means of cure, He has provided many 
natural and spiritual agencies which men may learn to utilize 
for the same beneficent purpose. 



THE LORD AS PHYSICIAN. 53 

The conditions of cure by his immediate presence seem to 
be humility, obedience, faith, and expectation. The deeper the 
humility or self-abnegation and self-surrender, the more cer- 
tainly can the divine sphere operate on the soul ; for the Lord 
enters as self recedes. The more absolute the determination 
to obey the divine commandments and to submit to the di- 
vine will, the more surely will the evil influences of the oppo- 
site character, which are the spiritual causes of disease, be re- 
pelled from the spiritual life. Faith in the Lord implies a 
knowledge of his character, "whom to know is life eternal," 
and a perfect assurance of his power to heal. Expectation is 
a tension of the mind and the body towards the realization 
of the change hoped and prayed for — a fixed belief that the 
prayer of faith is about to produce its promised result. These 
conditions, no doubt very imperfectly developed, have been 
uniformly present, either with the patients or with those who 
prayed for them, in all the wonderful cases related of the cure 
by faith and prayer. And could these conditions be per- 
fectly fulfilled, I believe there is no limit to the possibilities 
of the manifestations of the Lord in the souls and bodies of 
men. 

And yet, my dear sir, we may here expect too much, a 
great deal too much, by understanding too little. The above 
conditions might be apparently perfect, and no cure follow. 
The whole Christian world might concentrate its prayers on 
one object, and no result be obtained. The faith-cure and 
all other spiritual exaltations may die away and disappear. 
The faith and love of the church may be utterly darkened 
like the sun and the moon of the last days, and yet the Lord 
will continue to descend into ultimates, to imbue the sciences 
with new light and greater uses, to illumine the minds of men 
5* 



54 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

with spiritual truths of higher and higher degrees, and to 
inspire their hearts with a new, perfect religious life, im- 
measurably nearer to Himself than all the righteousness of 
the Scribes and Pharisees. And so, working from within, 
removing obstructions, striking at the very roots of causes, 
moving downwards and outwards, He will finally elimi- 
nate all the elements of disease and disorder from the physi- 
cal universe. 

Of one thing, my dear sir, we may be perfectly certain, 
viz. : that there are some hidden elements at work in the faith- 
cures besides the faith and the prayer, or that faith and prayer 
have some deeper meaning than those which are usually at- 
tached to them. If an infinitely merciful and all-powerful 
God could relieve suffering and cure diseases outside of fixed 
laws, why should He wait to be begged and implored for help 
before He is willing to give it ? and why should He confine 
his beneficence to those who had the good fortune to know 
of Him and to believe in Him ? It is plain that God oper- 
ates always according to law and through definite media or 
agencies. Prayer then is not mere supplication. No amount 
of supplication can open heaven to a man. The only key 
that opens heaven is a heavenly character. Prayer is a state 
of the heart and the will, a state of humility, submission, ex- 
pectation, receptivity. It is the law of the mode of union 
with God in operation. Faith is a similar attitude of the un- 
derstanding. The two in active exercise constitute and im- 
ply the accommodation of the whole man to divine influ- 
ences. This state puts the soul into rapport with good spirits 
and angels and all the great organic media which are posited 
between God and nature and connect one with the other. 
The question of what results are attainable and how attained, 



THE LORD AS PHYSICIAN. 55 

must be infinitely complicated and difficult of solution. We 
can readily imagine that under perfect conditions all the 
miracles of Christ might be repeated, while under imperfect 
conditions nothing whatever would ensue. 

Reflect also, if you please, upon the exceedingly complex 
nature of the problem on the physical side. There are three 
great classes of disease, ist. Those that belong to the indi- 
vidual and his surroundings — diseases caused by his situation, 
business, habits and conduct, in his struggle for existence 
against both man and nature. 2d. Diseases whose germs 
are constitutional inheritances from innumerable ancestral 
sources. 3d. Diseases which flow from the solidarity of the 
race, concrete spheres of evil, epidemics, contagions, that 
come and go like malignant comets, visiting with destruction 
places and persons who have not originated them, and who 
do not seem to be in any way spiritually responsible for their 
appearance. 

Now, if we knew the spiritual causes of all these complex 
phenomena and their relations to each other, as well as their 
bearing upon each individual case, we would perhaps discover 
why some people are easily cured by prayer and faith, others 
with difficulty, and the majority not at all. We might also 
learn why the good so often suffer and the evil escape. We 
might explain that painfullest of all enigmas, the sickness and 
death of children. Perhaps also we might grasp the spiritual 
ministry of disease and suffering, and perceive that nothing 
could be more disastrous to the race than their sudden abo- 
lition, whether it was effected by the measures of the scien- 
tists or the prayers of the saints. 

Yours truly, 

W. H. H. 



LETTER V. 

REMAINS: "THE REMNANT:" THE OLD AND NEW 
PROPRIUM. 

DEAR SIR: — You relate two remarkable cases of appar- 
ently total change of character in old age, and ask me to 
explain them. I feel that this is an excellent opportunity 
of unfolding to you one of the most wonderful and beautiful 
doctrines of Swedenborg, the doctrine of Remains and their 
vivification, and incidentally of casting a strong light upon 
some of the most mysterious things in the religious experience 
of Christians. 

You tell me of a man who had lived an irreligious and 
sinful life for sixty years, scoffing at sacred things, and ap- 
parently hardening himself in vice. This man, the terror and 
annoyance of his neighborhood, accidentally (but there is no 
accident) attended a Methodist camp-meeting. He became 
convicted of sin, and as the good Methodists say, " power- 
fully converted." He lived some years after, and never re- 
lapsed into his old evil states. On the contrary, he was a 
model of humility and sanctity, led a truly Christian life, and 
professed always to enjoy the light and peace of God in his 
soul. 

The other case, which happened many years ago, filled a 
large religious and social circle with amazement, pain, and 
sorrow. A clergyman, far advanced in years, of high stand- 
ing and character, was detected in the commission of a most 
revolting crime. He was expelled from his church, ostracised 

56 



THE OLD AND NEW PROPRIUM. S7 

by society, and died in the utmost obscurity and wretched- 
ness, apparently deserted by God and man. 

Now what shall we think of these two men ? Is it possible 
that evil can be turned into good, and good into evil, in this 
sudden and unexpected manner ? Can the prodigal and the 
elder brother instantly reverse conditions ? Can the leopard 
thus change his spots, and the Ethiopian his skin? The 
psychologist would explain the first case, by the power of one 
grand emotion to displace another, and the second case by the 
sudden maniacal impulse to crime, due to a diseased heredity. 
Neither hypothesis is altogether satisfactory. Swedenborg 
gives the key to both cases, and with it the key to many won- 
derful things in the experiences of the religious life. 

It is an astonishing fact that every impression made upon 
the human soul, and every state induced upon it, remains to 
all eternity. Nothing is effaced, nothing is effaceable : all 
remains, and under proper conditions can be reproduced. 
The intellectual or mental part of this fact has been long 
known to physiologists. 

"The reproduction/' says Dr. Carpenter, "of past states 
of consciousness induced by either of the forms of suggestive 
action already described (observation and introspection), con- 
stitutes what is known as memory. There seems much ground 
for the belief that every ideational state which has even 
transiently occupied the consciousness, is registered (so to 
speak) in the cerebrum, and may be reproduced at some sub- 
sequent time, although there may be no consciousness of its 
existence in the mind during the whole intermediate period." 

Now this fact is equally true of all the emotions and affec- 
tions which the soul has ever experienced, even from the mo- 
ment of birth. Every good or evil state, every appetite, every 



53 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

passion, every temper, with all their infinitely varied degrees, 
phenomena and attendant causes and effects, are perfectly 
registered upon our moral being. Their reproduction in the 
spiritual world according to spiritual laws and processes, brings 
us into judgment. No concealment is there possible. Every 
thought of the mind, every wish of the heart, every iota of 
the conduct will reappear, according to uses or necessities, 
and be unfolded and revealed to ourselves and others. 

Swedenborg condenses the doctrine of " remains " and their 
uses in a very interesting paragraph. 

"Remains are not only the goods and truths which a man 
has learned from his infancy out of the Lord's Word, and 
which are thereby impressed on his memory, but they are like- 
wise all states thence derived ; as states of innocence from 
infancy; states of love towards parents, brothers, teachers, 
and friends ; states of charity towards the neighbor, and also 
of mercy towards the poor and needy ; in a word, all states of 
goodness and truth. These states, with their goods and truths 
impressed on the memory are called remains, which remains 
are preserved in man by the Lord, and are stored up in his 
internal man, and are carefully separated from the things of 
man's proprium, which are evils and falsities. All these states 
are so preserved in man by the Lord that not the smallest of 
them is lost, as it was given me to know by this circumstance, 
that every state of man, from his infancy even to extreme old 
age, not only remains in another life, but also returns, and 
that in their return they are exactly such as they were during 
man's abode in this world. Not only the goods and truths as 
stored up in the memory remain and return, but likewise all 
the states of innocence and charity. When states of the evil 
and the false, or of wickedness and fantasy recur, which also 
both generally and particularly as to every least circumstance 
remain and return, then these latter states are attempered by 



THE OLD AND NEW PROPRIUM. 59 

the former through the divine operation of the Lord. Whence 
it is evident that unless man had some remains he could not 
avoid eternal condemnation." — A. C. n. 561. 

The implantation of "remains" should be the chief end 
in view in the treatment and training of the young. The 
more tenderly we love and rear our children, the more we do 
to call forth the gentleness, sweetness, goodness, innocence, 
love, peace, and joy, which the Lord, through attendant 
angels, is perpetually endeavoring to infuse into them, the 
more richly will they be dowered with "remains," the more 
easily and rapidly will they progress in the work of regenera- 
tion, and the better and more beautiful will be their lives as 
men here and as angels hereafter. O, my friend, what shall 
we say of those who neglect, or maltreat, or badly train their 
children ? Who repress the good that is striving to unfold, 
and encourage the hereditary evil of their natures? Who 
introduce them, by example if not by precept, into atmos- 
pheres of deceit, fraud, selfishness, pride, cruelty, and vio- 
lence ? Alas ! what can we say, except to repeat the words 
of the Master, in allusion to those who murder the states of 
innocence and faith in themselves and others : 

6 'But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe 
in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged 
about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depths of. the 
sea. 

But the remains of good and truth are not insinuated into 
infancy and childhood by parents and teachers only. There 
are remains of good and truth — genuine states of affection 
and thought, implanted by the Lord through his angels, in 
the inmost recesses of our being, which may have never come 
to the surface where our consciousness resides, and which are 



60 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

the fountains and storehouses, the potential germs and possi- 
bilities of an eternal life. This great truth is illustrated by 
a curious fact cited by Dr. Carpenter in his Physiology, which 
will perhaps enable you to understand more clearly what I 
mean. 

" There was a congenital idiot who had lost his mother 
when two years old, and who could not subsequently have 
been made cognizant of anything relating to her. And yet 
this man, when dying at the age of thirty, suddenly turned 
his head, looked bright and sensible, and exclaimed in a 
tone never heard from him before, c Oh, my mother ! how 
beautiful ! ' and sank round again, dead." 

Whence did this poor creature, born in utter darkness of 
soul, and evincing no ray of external intelligence through 
thirty years of idiocy, whence did he suddenly derive the 
light of thought in his countenance, the tones of affection in 
his voice, and all the tender and glorious associations which 
cluster around the composite ideas of mother and beauty? 
Truly, " a man can receive nothing except it be given him 
from heaven M — the motto of a philosophy of nature, which 
was the oldest and is yet the newest and the least understood 
in the world. 

Now, my dear sir, our thoughts or mental impressions, and 
our feelings or emotional impressions, are not piled together 
in the spirit like a confused heap of stones or lumber. They 
are arranged by spiritual laws, of which we know almost noth- 
ing, into groups and classes and genera, and with such ex- 
quisite accuracy and order that all relationships are exactly 
maintained, and the whole understanding of the man, and 
his whole will-principle, are organized into forms as absolute 
and perfect as those of the human body. 



THE OLD AND NEW PROPRIUM. 6 1 

Moreover, the good and true thoughts and the good feelings 
or states of the will are kept entirely separate from the evil 
states of the will and the false states of the understanding. 
The remains of good connect us with the Lord and the angels, 
for the heavens flow into them with a ceaseless conatus or 
endeavor to animate them into a heavenly life upon earth. 
The remains of evil, both acquired and hereditary, connect 
us with the hells, and are the sources of all our wickedness 
and fantasies. Thus we carry both heaven and hell within 
us, and we make our own heaven and our own hell by vol- 
untarily inclining to one or the other of these interior depart- 
ments of our own being. 

Between these two great lines of force we are held in per- 
petual equilibrium by the mysterious operations of Divine 
Providence, so that our free agency and liberty are always 
preserved, and we can choose which life to appropriate and 
make our own, the good or the evil. According as we incline 
this way or that, we create our spiritual day or night, our spir- 
itual summer or winter, our spiritual heaven or hell. In pro- 
portion as we die to one sphere, we live to the other. One 
life is that of the old proprium, the old Adam ; the other life 
is that of the new proprium, the new man "created in Christ 
Jesus.' ' When we sink into the old life, the angels of the 
good life (the angels of our better nature) plead with us and 
strive for us. When we return into the remains of good and 
truth, the spirits of the evil life assault our positions, and we 
are led into grievous temptations, in which the goods and 
truths of the Word assist and defend us. And thus we fluc- 
tuate to and fro, up and down, until we lay aside forever the 
life of self and the world for the sake of Christ and his gos- 
pel ; or until we suffocate and destroy the angelic remains 



62 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

within us, so that the Holy Spirit is grieved away and the 
heavens are closed against us, and we sink into obdurate states 
of unbelief and sensuality. 

These states of goodness and truth are stored up in the in- 
teriors of our being for use in the subsequent work of regen- 
eration. They are represented in the Word by the corn which 
was stored up in the granaries of Egypt during the seven years 
of plenty, and which was distributed to the people according 
to their vital necessities during the seven years of famine. 
This spiritual work is done by the Lord for every man. No 
matter how near we are to the angels in infancy and early 
childhood, we are sure to recede from their heavenly influ- 
ences, to become entangled in the snares of the world, to fall 
into temptation and sin, to wander away fr^m our Father's 
house, and sink into states of spiritual famine and wretched- 
ness, contending with the swine for their husks, which are the 
vanities and ambitions of this life. But into whatever depths 
of evil and infamy a man may fall, he need not perish; for the 
" remains" of goodness and truth implanted in early life will 
reach him even while he grovels in the dust. The memory 
of " bread enough and to spare" in his Father's house, will be 
stirred, and the desire to arise and go to his Father will be 
awakened in his bosom. 

It is a wonderful fact that the goods and truths of our life 
are never mixed or amalgamated with our evils and falsities. 
They are kept separate, and we do not live in both at the 
same time, as it appears, but we pass, however rapidly and 
imperceptibly to ourselves, from one to the other. In pro- 
portion as men become worse and worse, and seem to be irre- 
claimably evil, the remains of good and truth are indrawn 
and more deeply concealed by the Lord to save them from 



THE OLD AND NEW PROPRIUM. 63 

profanation or destruction. So when men seem to be holy 
and saintly beyond temptation, the indestructible hell is only 
covered over within them, ready to burst forth on some un- 
fortunate opportunity. 

"For man also knoweth not his time : as the fishes that are 
taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the 
snare, so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it 
falleth suddenly upon them." 

So long as we live in this world, in equilibrium between 
heaven and hell, we fluctuate between good and evil ; but 
after death and the judgment we enter into the relatively 
fixed conditions of one or the other. That these two oppo- 
site lives are evolved and developed within us simultaneously, 
is illustrated by a very curious fact which often occurs in the 
experiences of the religious warfare. The Christian who falls 
back into open sin, and the reformed drunkard who returns to 
his cups, do not hold their good state and gradually lose their 
virtue and their self-control as they did at first. They drop 
at once, or very rapidly, into all their old iniquities. They 
seem to take up the thread of the evil life exactly where they 
left it. It is the same old sinner, the same old drunkard. 
This is equally true of the good life. When a man repents 
and returns, self-loathing, into states of obedience and faith, 
he also takes up the thread of the Christian life exactly where 
he had dropped it. He does not have to begin it all over 
again with feeble, uncertain steps. Everything once gained 
has been carefully and tenderly preserved for him, and he 
re-enters upon his spiritual inheritance, amazed and over- 
whelmed at the mercy and goodness of God toward such a 
miserable sinner. 

With these general principles in view, you will be able, my 



64 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

dear sir, to comprehend the phenomena of the two cases you 
have presented to my consideration. 

The first man underwent no such sudden change of character 
as he seems to have undergone. He simply entered into the 
conscious possession and manifestation of a different charac- 
ter, which had been early implanted and was long maturing 
within him. No instantaneous change from evil to good, or 
from good to evil, is possible. All such phenomena are ap- 
pearances, and are explained by the fact that good or evil 
states, which had been long organically registered on the 
spiritual structures, were revived and brought to the surface. 
The piety of an old man thus brought into the heavenly vine- 
yard at the eleventh hour, is apt to be childlike, trusting, and 
tender, for it is a sort of return into the Sunday-school states 
of his boyhood, qualified by a deep humility from the mem- 
ory of a long life of sin. He is a babe and not a strong man 
in Christ. He, too, however, receives the same wages as 
those who have "borne the burden and heat of the day/ ' 
which is the full measure and running over of what his own or- 
ganic states are able to bear and to utilize in the life to come. 

As the first man you mention was not nearly so good as he 
seemed, so the last man was not nearly so evil as he seemed. 
A long life of religious fervor is no security against the sudden 
outburst of the hells within us, as many have found to their 
misery, both in this world and in the world of spirits, when 
the secrets of all hearts are laid open. But this state, imposed 
from within, is always transitory. The poor criminal minis- 
ter, who was hounded to death by the self-righteous church 
and world around him, was no doubt delivered from the evil 
spheres which infested him, and re-entered into the peaceful, 
happy, useful life, for which his spiritual struggles of so many 



THE OLD AND NEW PROPRIUM. 65 

years had prepared him. His great fall was perhaps one of 
the strongest means of his regeneration ; for there is no spir- 
itual experience so valuable to us, as that which reveals plainly 
to us the unfathomable hells within ourselves, and so con- 
vinces us of our lost condition. Never until we reach this 
true estimate of our own natures, can the selfhood be radi- 
cally subdued and the Lord enter to abide. 

Do you say that I condone the crime of this man and wink 
at evil. I tell you, nay; but I say that we are all in the same 
organic conditions, with the same hells within us. and that 
this man in his own nature was no worse than the best of us. 
I answer you in the precious words of our Lord : 

" Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the 
Galileans, because they suffered such things ? 

I tell you, Nay; but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise 
perish. 

Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower of Siloani fell and 
slew them ; think ye that they were sinners above all men that 
dwelt in Jerusalem ? 

I tell you, Nay ; but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise 
perish. * ' 

The surest, indeed the only way, to vivify the remains of 
good and truth, and to bring them into external activity, is 
to reach and touch and arouse the affections. The camp- 
meeting and the salvation army, in their rude, rough way, 
and with a false system which can never be anything but 
ephemeral, hold the secret of secrets, which it would be well 
for the more enlightened Christian element to discover and 
to utilize. This secret is, that a man's life is in what he loves 
and not in what he believes, and his affections are the hidden 
springs from which his thoughts and his actions proceed. 
6* E 



66 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

Truth by itself is cold and dead ; and a doctrinal sermon, 
with all its finely pointed lessons, is about as useful to the 
soul as a polished essay on history or astronomy. The tender 
voice of earnest prayer, and the touching music of beautiful 
hymns are the strongest elements for good in our ordinary 
church service. But there will no flesh grow upon the skele- 
tons of our religious life, until the affections are vivified and 
the emotions ignited; until fear and terror and trembling 
overtake us; until repentance, remorse, self-loathing, and 
despair afflict us ; until hope, peace, and joy are born in us ; 
and until the love of God and the neighbor burn through us 
like great fires, consuming the lusts of the flesh, the cares of 
the world, the deceitfulness of riches, and all the ugly and 
detestable brood of the selfhood. • 

The new proprium, or the life of consociated goods and 
truths, and the old proprium, or the life of consociated evils 
and falsities, are the two lives alluded to in the Word — one 
of which must be laid down or lost if the other is saved. 
There is no compromise between them, but an organic antip- 
athy and perpetual divergence. In the new proprium or 
the new man, we are in the Lord who is the new Adam. In 
the old proprium or the old man, the old Adam, we are in 
hell. In the latter, we are capable of all crimes whenever 
the circumstances and opportunities of our environment are 
favorable. In the former, we are capable of being wrought 
up into the organic structures of the heavens, and of leading 
that life which is "hid with Christ in God." 

Yours truly, 

W. H. H. 



M 



LETTER VI. 

ECCLESIASTICAL AND VITAL RELIGION. 

' Y DEAR FRIEND :— You have asked me what are the 
differences and the relationships between what you 
have heard me call ecclesiastical and vital religion. 
Are they not one and the same thing ? Is not the religion 
engendered by the teachings and ordinances of the church, 
the New Church specifically, a vital and spiritual religion? 
Can there be any vital religion without an ecclesiastical basis? 
These questions are of vast importance, not only to the aggre- 
gate church in its social and historical relations ; but also to 
the individual church, the church within every man's soul, 
where, whether he knows it or designs it or not, he has either 
an ecclesiastical or vital religion separately, or both harmoni- 
ously combined, or neither — the church in the man being 
unformed, or perhaps in ruins. I cannot better preface what 
I have to say, than by drawing upon the supernal knowledge 
of Swedenborg in relation to the differences between the in- 
. ternal and the external man of the church, and the differences 
between internal and external worship in general. 

" The man of the internal church attributes to the Lord all 
the good he does and all the truth he thinks : but of this the 
man of the external church is ignorant, although he still acts 
rightly. The man of the internal church makes charity the 
essential of the worship of the Lord, and indeed regards in- 
ternal worship as more important than external : but the man 
of the external church makes external worship the essential, 
being ignorant of what internal worship is, although he per- 

67 



68 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

forms it. The man of the internal church believes that he 
acts contrary to conscience, if he does not worship the Lord 
from an internal principle : but the man of the external church 
believes that he acts contrary to conscience if he does not 
reverently observe external rites." — A. C. 1098. 

"Internal worship, which is grounded in love and charity, 
is real worship or worship itself, and external worship without 
this internal is no worship. To make internal worship exter- 
nal, is to make external worship essential more than internal, 
which is to invert the true order. . . . The religion of those 
who separate faith from charity is of such a sort, viz., they 
give a preference to the things of faith above the things of 
charity, or to the things which respect the knowledges of faith 
above the things which respect life ; thus they prefer formali- 
ties to essentials. 

"Supposing a person to live where there is no church, no 
preaching, no sacraments, no priesthood : if it be asserted that 
such a person cannot be saved, or that he cannot exercise any 
worship, when nevertheless he may worship the Lord from 
what is internal, this is to make worship consist of that which 
is formal without the essential, and thus to make internal wor- 
ship external. 

" It does not hence follow, however, that there should be no 
external worship. There are persons who place the very essen- 
tial of worship in going to church, attending the sacraments, 
hearing sermons, repeating prayers, observing the festivals, 
and performing other things of an external and ceremonial 
nature, talking also occasionally about faith ; and who per- 
suade themselves that these things, which all relate to the 
formal part of worship, are sufficient. 

"Now they who make essential worship to be that which 
proceeds from love and charity, do like the former : that is, 
they go to church, attend the sacraments, hear sermons, repeat 
prayers, observe the festivals, and perform other things of a 
like nature ; and they do them very diligently and carefully, 



ECCLESIASTICAL AND VITAL RELIGION. 69 

but still they do not place in them the essential of worship. 
In the external worship of these, because it has internal wor- 
ship within it, there is a holy and living principle ; whereas in 
the external worship of the former there is no such principle.' 7 
-A. C. 1175. 

You see, my dear sir, that the human mind has two states as 
to religion. One is an internal and vital state, in which the 
man is organically and spontaneously religious, having reached 
the second stage of regeneration, a state which exists above, 
within, and independently of external things. It may, and 
when opportunity occurs it does, conjoin to itself a corre- 
sponding state of external worship. The other is an external 
or ecclesiastical state which may and always ought to have 
the former state within it as" a vivifying principle, but which 
very generally exists without it. This external church-reli- 
gionist persuades himself that what he calls the venerable and 
precious ordinances and usages of the church, have a genuine 
efficacy in the generation of the religious life ; and he estimates 
his own religious vitality and that of others by his and their 
conformity to all ecclesiastical demands. When this state 
exists without any regeneration of the will-principle, the man 
is simply a church-idolater, and may be externally devout and 
righteous, while internally he is estranged from the Lord and 
the life of heaven. 

Now why should the internal man — the man who lives in 
and near the Lord, and who is really independent of external 
things — why should he interest himself so "diligently and 
carefully ' ' about the external or ecclesiastical forms of reli- 
gion ? With the Word and the writings of Swedenborg at 
home, he never need go to a church for instruction as to 
matters of faith. He never need go to a church for the wor- 
ship of the Lord, for he knows that true worship does not 



yO LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

consist in religious exercises, but in profound humiliation of 
heart, in the ingrained spirit of charity in the soul, and in the 
good deeds of the daily life. The answer is, that the man 
who has any spark of spiritual or celestial life developed in 
him, loves and works for the church as a form of eminent use 
to the neighbor. 

This point needs further illustration. The man who supposes 
that the church was founded for the instruction and salvation 
of his individual soul, or to draw down the divine influx into 
forms of praying, singing, preaching, etc., has missed the 
genuine use of the church altogether. The church w r as es- 
tablished that each and all may take hold of it to promote the 
social and spiritual welfare of others. In its highest sense the 
church is the heart and lungs of the world, deriving its life 
from the living Word, the Divine Humanity, and distributing 
the love and wisdom of this Humanity to all creatures. That 
love and wisdom flow into humble and contrite hearts, into 
rational and enlightened minds, into hands and feet that are 
busy with labors and errands of love and charity. The entire 
associated uses of the world, however remote and impossible 
it may appear, have their spiritual origin in the activities of 
the internal church of God. He who most closely follows 
the Lord in the regeneration, dying most to self and living 
most in the Master, contributes most to all beneficent results. 

Moreover the Church, and every society in it, is a complex 
body. Like man himself, it is an image of the heavens. The 
true Church in ultimates must contain within itself all the sim- 
ultaneous degrees of life, celestial, spiritual, and natural. It 
is a living, breathing, growing body, containing every degree 
of life and ever-fluctuating and alternating varieties of states. 
It must provide spiritual sustenance and active uses for all the 



ECCLESIASTICAL AND VITAL RELIGION. 7 I 

stages of the spiritual life, from the sensuo-corporeal recep- 
tivities of the child, through all natural, rational, spiritual, and 
celestial states, up to the highest demands of the inmost life. 
Every one in a church can in some way help others in it ; and 
the higher and more inward a man has progressed, the greater 
becomes his obligation as well as his capacity to administer to 
the spiritual advancement of others. 

And right here, my dear friend, let me correct a false im- 
pression which prevails in relation to my views of the external 
church, unimportant as they are to any one else but myself. 
I saw a letter the other day in which a New- Church minister 
asserted, that we who believe in a celestial movement from 
the interior, repudiate the external church and even the holy 
Sacraments ! If I have ever said or written anything to justify 
this charge, I assure you that my remarks were addressed, not 
against the Church itself, or the principle of organization — 
but against the defective forms, modes, and measures of our 
New-Church bodies, which have seemed thus far to have pro- 
duced so much more ecclesiastical than vital religion. The 
following admirable extract from Swedenborg I accept unre- 
servedly as a statement of my faith on this subject : 

" By worship, in the internal sense, is signified all conjunc- 
tion by love and charity. Man is continually in worship, when 
he is in love and charity, external worship being only an effect 
proceeding from the former. The angels are in such worship ; 
wherefore with them there is a perpetual sabbath : whence also 
the sabbath, in its internal sense, signifies the kingdom of the 
Lord. Man, however, during his abode in the world, ought 
not to omit the practice of external worship, for by external 
worship things internal are excited (not created but called into 
activity) : and by external worship external things are kept in 
a state of sanctity, so that internal things can enter by influx. 



J 2 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

Moreover, man is hereby initiated into knowledges, and pre- 
pared to receive things celestial. He is also gifted with states 
of sanctity though he be ignorant thereof; which states are pre- 
served by the Lord for his use in eternal life. "— A. C. 1618. 

Moreover, it is to be remembered that any criticisms I may 
have made against the external church, are especially appli- 
cable to the external church within ourselves, that old eccle- 
siastical proprium which we all inherit, which delights in church 
matters and in artificial exaltations of the religious life ; which, 
as Swedenborg says, persuades us that the zealous performance 
of church duties is sufficient, which engenders the spirit of self- 
complacency, self-merit, and self-righteousness, and which, ig- 
noring the new birth, conceals from ourselves and others the 
evil and false things which constitute our interior life. This 
old ecclesiastical proprium is such a cunning, persuasive, se- 
cretive devil, that it takes the touchstone of the living Word 
to discover whether he does not underlie all our courtesies, our 
charities, our tolerations, our prayers, and every movement of 
our religious life. It is always self-love masquerading in the 
garb of love to the Lord and the neighbor. 

Now what is this vital religion which ought to pervade, vivify 
and sanctify the external things of the church ? Is it an ardent 
zeal acquired by the long and conscientious discharge of our 
duties as members of the church ? Is it a high state of religious 
culture, attained by sedulously keeping the commandments and 
modeling one's life after the purest and loftiest standards? No ! 
it is something entirely different. There is no possible outcome 
to these ecclesiastical modes and measures, but a gentle, deli- 
cate, and refined Phariseeism, a thoroughly concealed and sup- 
pressed proprium, such as adorns the beautiful and cleanly pages 
of church history from beginning to end. We instinctively 



ECCLESIASTICAL AND VITAL RELIGION. 73 

gasp and shudder at the thought that David and Paul may pos- 
sibly be found in the hells ; but such things become compre- 
hensible, if not credible, when we learn the difference between 
ecclesiastical and vital religion. 

Vital religion is the birth and growth of the Divine life and 
character in the soul, in proportion as the evils and falsities 
of the old proprium are seen, acknowledged, deplored, de- 
throned, and removed from the conscious sphere of life. It 
is indeed the Lord in the man. The Lord enters only as the 
selfhood, with all its vanities and follies and its ambitions 
' and aspirations, recedes and disappears. The new will cannot 
be born into a man until the old will is broken and subdued 
by suffering, temptation, conviction of sin, humiliation, self- 
loathing, and despair. The inflowing new life is the Lord's 
life, which man is permitted to feel as if it were his own — 
but which effectuates the Lord's will from the centres to the 
circumferences of his organic being. This new proprium, 
this new Adam, never did and never can sin ; and in propor- 
tion as it displaces the old proprium in the organic life of the 
church, the Lord Himself will enter the body of humanity, 
and stand in ultimates, constituting the life of the world as 
He is now the life of heaven. 

Now, my dear friend, you have preached for many years to 
a large congregation. Have you kept another record beside 
that of baptisms, marriages, deaths, removals, admissions, how 
many sermons preached, how often the sacrament was admin- 
istered, how much money received, how much spent, etc., etc.? 
Have you watched carefully the birth and growth of vital 
religion among your people ? Have you seen enemies recon- 
ciled, breaches healed, and the spirit of brotherhood and 
sisterhood steadily advancing? Have you seen that sordid 
7 



74 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

man grow liberal, that proud man grow humble, that choleric 
man become meek and patient, that self-opinionated fellow 
grow silent and lowly ? Have you seen the tattler cease to 
gossip, the busybody stay at home and make no mischief, the 
ostentatious person become simple and unpretending, the ex- 
aggerator and prevaricator subside and tell the unvarnished 
truth, the tricky tradesman become thoroughly honest even 
to his own injury? Have you seen that your people grew 
deeper and deeper into the spiritual life, and more and more 
active and zealous in all the works of love and charity ? Or 
do you find things to-day pretty much as they were in the 
beginning — no progress, no living experiences, no vital changes 
— the people quietly growing old in all their moral infirmities 
and vices, with no genuine self-knowledge or reformation, self- 
complacent, and satisfied with the cheap moralities that are 
imposed upon or engendered in us by self-respect, self-inter- 
est, and the outside pressure of law, social usage, and public 
opinion ? 

Who is to blame for the lukewarmness and deadness of the 
church, — the people, the preacher, the doctrines taught, or 
the methods employed? However these questions are an- 
swered, one thing is certain : the great need of the church is 
vital religion. Internal worship first, external worship after- 
wards. If the old methods and forms and liturgies, so vener- 
able and precious to some people, produce no better results 
than we have seen, let us abandon them. We need not regret 
the old garments and the old bottles, assured that the inspira- 
tions of internal worship will lead us to something new and 
better. 

The history of the human heart, from Buddha to John 
Wesley, reveals many yearnings after a true and vital religion. 



ECCLESIASTICAL AND VITAL RELIGION. J$ 

The celestial seed, however, would scarcely be planted, before 
some towering Babel of ecclesiasticism would overshadow and 
destroy it. Before Swedenborg, moreover, no opening of the 
celestial degree could have been anything else but premature, 
imperfect, and even hazardous. If planes are not formed in 
the spiritual degree of the mind for the reception of celestial 
influx into its corresponding truths, the influx passes through 
into the natural plane, where it falls into the old proprium, 
and is turned into fantasies, follies, and even abominations. 
By the opening of the spiritual sense of the Word, those re- 
ceptive planes of spiritual truth are formed in the mind, and 
the celestial life, which is vital religion, becomes possible — 
yea, imperative to the man of the New Church ; for our Rachel 
is even now crying, " Give me children, or else I die.' 7 

The vital religion which will inevitably, sooner or later, be 
developed in the bosom of the New Church, will exceed in 
strength, purity, and perfection anything which has hitherto 
been witnessed, taught, or dreamed of in the world. It will 
have the true spiritual basis, and will finally organize for itself 
its true and perfect externals. The Church is the heart and 
lungs of the world — the central, vivifying force in human so- 
ciety. When its breaths and its pulsations are brought into 
harmony with those of the heavens, the fire of divine love 
and the light of divine wisdom will pour in living streams 
through the social fabric, and their regenerating influences 
will be felt in the uttermost parts of the earth. When the 
augean stables of our own souls are cleansed of all sin, the 
power of the Lord passing through his church, will pervade 
all nations and will reach the slums of New York, Paris, and. 
London, the brutal and dangerous classes everywhere, and 
even the serpents and wild beasts — those hideous outbirths of 
the evil principles in our own hearts. 



?6 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

O my friend — my brother ! Let us forget all that is behind 
and press forward toward this great light. Study these interior 
truths of Sweden borg : preach them to your people. Awaken 
their consciences : convict them of sin, pointing with the fin- 
ger, "thou art the man." Cry aloud. Spare not. Lift up 
the standard. Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Teach the 
celestial church — the celestial life — the new and perfect life — 
the life which is "hid with Christ in God." 

Yours affectionately, 

W. H. H. 



LETTER VII. 



THE NEW LIFE.— MADAM GUYON.— THE RELIGIOUS 
PEOPRIUM. 



M 



" Y DEAR FRIEND :— Your photograph arrived the other 
day, and I submitted it to my friend G. W. C, with- 
out informing him whose it was. He gazed at it in- 
tently for several minutes, and then made the following re- 
markable utterance : 

"This man is so thoroughly good, so absolutely and utterly 
determined to be right and to do right, from centres to cir- 
cumferences, that he has no genuine conception whatever of 
what is right, or of what it is to follow the Lord." 

"Explain your paradox," I said. 

"It is no paradox," he answered, "but a simple New- 
Church truth. He is like the young man who had kept all 
the commandments from his youth up, and who was as lovely 
as possible in externals, and no doubt a splendid specimen of 
the good man of his times, but who was entirely unwilling to 
sell all that he had and follow Jesus." 

I reflected upon that incident, related in Matt. xix. 16-22. 
This was the young man who called our Lord "Good Mas- 
ter," and to whom He answered, "Why callest thou me 
good? There is none good but God." If our Lord's human 
nature derived from the mother, which endured the most ter- 
rible temptations, and yet never yielded to a single sin in 
wish, thought, or act, could not be called good, and Jesus 
expressly says so, how inconceivably absurd, thievish, wicked, 
7* 77 



78 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

and offensive to God must be our personal pretensions to any 
inherent or acquired goodness of character ! 

To sell all that we have, Swedenborg says, means "to alien- 
ate all things of the proprium " — to get rid of our own wishes, 
desires, ambitions, conceptions, pretensions, etc. In this way 
we all have "great possessions," and we are exceedingly un- 
willing to give them up. And our greatest possession, and 
the most necessary to be abandoned, is our sense of owner- 
ship in our virtues. The more we strive and struggle for the 
good life, the more we labor and pray from our own resolute 
determinations, the farther off are we from the new life, which 
is that of the angels — free, spontaneous, without struggle — a 
life of total and absolute self-surrender, and therefore an or- 
ganic evolution of a new proprium, which is God's life in us. 

"What do you think," I resumed to G. W. C., "of this 
man's spiritual condition?" 

" He may be a much better man than you or I," he said ; 
"that is, the Lord may manifest Himself more powerfully 
and usefully through him. Whether the Lord manifest Him- 
self through a man as a prophet or a boot-black, is the Lord's 
business and not the man's, who in either case is nothing, 
and should feel and know that he is nothing. 

"Your friend," he continued, "is in a state of suppressed 
proprium, or of temporary elevation above the proprium, with 
a partial opening of the spiritual senses. He is a phenome- 
non to be studied ; and a great many phenomena will appear 
of a still more astounding character. He cannot teach. He 
can never realize the new life until the sphere of ecclesiasti- 
cism in which he is encased, is entirely broken up." 

"You say there is a strong methodistical sphere about my 
interiors," I suggested. 



THE RELIGIOUS PROPRIUM. 79 

" So there is," he replied, "and you are maintained in it 
at present for purposes of use ; but when you are delivered 
from it, you will discover how poorly and feebly you have 
ever understood or realized the ' newness of life ' in which 
the Christian of the New Age is to walk." 

"Your conceptions of the new life are very surprising to 
me," I said, "and I cannot fully comprehend them. I have 
never heard or read of anything like them but in the Spiritual 
Torrents of Madam Guyon." 

"Ah," he answered, " how can the new life be compre- 
hended until it is unfolded? It has very seldom existed in 
the world since the Most Ancient Church. It is coming, 
however. The seed is planted, and it must grow. As to 
Madam Guyon, I have gone through every one of her spirit- 
ual states hundreds of times. I have experienced the truth 
of all she has said, but she is imperfect, inchoate, and has 
left a thousand things unsaid. You will find the key to her 
experiences, and mine, and probably all others, in Sweden- 
borg. And yet many good people will read Swedenborg 
over and over again, and never find it." 

Now, my dear friend, that little book of Madam Guyon, 
edited by Rev. A. E. Ford, with illustrative extracts from 
Swedenborg, would be very useful to you. It was published 
by Otis Clapp of Boston in 1853, and is such a genuine stimu- 
lus to the truly regenerate life, that it is a wonder and a pity 
that it is not better known to our people. Madam Guyon, 
under the title oi proprietary things, reveals to us the dangers, 
subtleties, and concealments of the proprium, " the depths of 
Satan," in a most striking manner, and in perfect accordance 
with the doctrines of the New Church on that subject. 

We all understand the movements of the proprium in the 

7 



SO LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

sensual, social, and civil spheres of life, but few of us have 
ever comprehended its immense strength and subtlety in moral 
and religious matters. The selfhood often busies itself in- 
tensely in spiritual things. We compel ourselves firmly and 
bravely to abstain from evils and to do goods, we infuse our 
whole will into the discharge of religious duty, and make great 
progress in the religious life, and seem to ourselves and others 
to be wonderfully endowed with heavenly gifts and graces; 
and yet all this is only what Swedenborg calls " the life of 
truth from itself" (A. C. 3607); and the utter privation of 
such a life is not, as he goes on to say, " the extinction of 
truth, but its vivification." 

This is only the first stage of, or ascending movement to- 
ward, the new life. It is not the new life which descends al- 
together from above. The selfhood is unbroken : it is only 
elevated above sensual matters and enlisted powerfully in the 
service of the spiritual life, but really for its own benefit. As 
Swedenborg says : " In doing good, they do it not from the 
affection of good, but from the affection of somewhat blessed 
and happy in regard to themselves." — A. C. 3816. "You 
love God," says Madam Guyon to this class, "not only be- 
cause He is lovely, but you love also for the pleasure you find 
in this exercise of loving." God, however, does not always 
leave these good souls in the peaceful delights of their own 
sanctity, but leads them gently on to that mystic death, which 
is the laying down of their own life for Christ's sake. 

"The poor soul sees well that it must needs die, for it no 
longer finds life in anything. Everything becomes to it, death 
and the cross. Prayer, reading, conversation, all is death. 
It no longer has a relish for anything, neither for the practice 
of the virtues, nor for aiding the sick, nor for anything else 



THE RELIGIOUS PROPRIUM. C 1 

which constitutes a virtuous life. It loses all this, or rather it 
dies to all these things ; doing them with so much pain and 
disrelish, that they become a kind of death to it. At length, 
after having fought long and ineffectually, after a long succes- 
sion of sorrows and reposes, of dyings and livings, it begins 
to perceive how it has abused the mercies of God, and how 
much more profitable this state of death is to it than that of 
life." — Spl. Torrents, p. 86. 

Now, my dear friend, this is not a mere state of very severe 
temptations from which a man emerges into a renewed enjoy- 
ment of the sanctities of his former experience. It is the pro- 
cess by which the Lord breaks the force of the human will, 
which infuses itself into holy things and appropriates them to 
itself. It is a renunciation of all the splendid and imposing 
spiritual gifts for what Paul calls "a more excellent way" 
— the way of simple charity — the charity of the 13th I. Co- 
rinthians. Of the life which follows after these experiences, 
Madam Guy on says : 

" The soul on leaving the tomb finds itself, without know- 
ing how it came to pass and without thinking of it, clothed 
with all the inclinations of Jesus Christ : and this, not by dis- 
tinct views or practices, but by stales, finding them all on any 
occasion when they are necessary to be acted, without thought 
of its own. Then it is truly clothed with Jesus Christ. It is 
properly He who is then acting, speaking, and conversing in 
the soul : our Lord Jesus Christ being the principle of all its 
movements." 

Do we know anything about these states ? Have we ever 

experienced this death and life ? Only by the death of the 

religious proprium can our Lord descend into the body of 

Humanity. 

Yours truly, 

W. H. H. 
' F 



LETTER VIII. 

SHALL WE KNOW OURSELVES, OR NOT? 

DEAR FRIEND : —In the interest of genuine New-Church 
doctrine, I must protest against the spirit and matter 
of the article entitled "Keep your eye on the Lord 
Jesus, and not on your old proprium." Mr. P. is evidently 
a gentleman of excellent intentions, earnest convictions, and 
enthusiastic piety, and has been for nearly two years the sub- 
ject of conscious influxes from the interior into the sensories 
of his body of the most remarkable character. But all these 
do not constitute a man a judicious teacher of a New-Church 
public, and we must bring his utterances to the test of that 
high standard of truth which we believe has been revealed to 
us from heaven. 

The gist of his article is this : that it is useless and even 
harmful to bother ourselves in the least about the old pro- 
prium and all the evils and falsities it contains ; that the true 
road to Christian felicity is to dismiss self entirely from the 
mind, and fix your eye upon Jesus, the author of our faith 
and the finisher of our hope. 

To strengthen this position, which has a strong resemblance 
to the " faith-alone " teachings of Moody and Sankey, he 
makes some extraordinary assertions, which we of the New 
Church cannot permit to pass for genuine truth. 

He says the devil delights to have us turn our attention 

exclusively upon himself, to make a great deal of him, to 

watch him, explore him, expose him, and make ourselves un- 

82 



SHALL WE KNOW OURSELVES? 83 

happy about everything he is doing in us, satisfied that in 
that way he can keep us from fixing our eye upon Jesus. How 
strange and untrue this sounds to us who learn from Sweden- 
borg that the evil spirits within us are tortured when the 
searching light of divine truth is turned upon them, and that 
our self-examinations, leading to true self-knowledge, beget 
states of humiliation and repentance, which bring the angels 
and the Lord nearer and nearer to us, until after severe com- 
bats, the evil spirits are thrust down and cast back into the 
hells, into which, during our states of self-ignorance or sup- 
pressed proprium, they were dragging us. 

Again he says, that although the devil may appear as an 
angel of light, he can never put on the garb of an angel of 
love. Another terrible mistake ! Swedenborg says that evil 
spirits, especially the sirens, imitate our good affections so 
closely, present such aspects of purity, loveliness, and goodness, 
as to seem like the very angels of heaven. These insinuate them- 
selves into all the good works we do, and as Henry James 
clearly shows in his "Substance and Shadow/' have been, 
through our suppressed propriums, the most active and pros- 
perous churchmen and churchwomen from the beginning of 
the world. This class are truly happy when we give ourselves 
up without analysis to their leading, and build our hope of 
salvation on faith and religious exercises and enjoyments. 

Mr. P. thinks that the Christian who looks perpetually to 
Jesus, has no right to be anything else but blessed, blessed, 
blessed, continually blessed, for so run the promises. He has 
not noticed that the Word bestows all these blessings, not 
upon those who only look to Jesus, but always upon those 
who have contended with and vanquished the old proprium. 
" To him that overcometh M is the word of promise in all the 



84 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

seven churches. "Blessed is the man that walketh not in 
the counsel of the ungodly/' etc. " Blessed is he whom the 
Lord chasteneth." "Blessed is he that watcheth and keep- 
eth his garments." "Blessed are the poor in spirit." 
" Blessed are they that mourn." " Blessed are they that hun- 
ger and thirst." " Blessed are the reviled and persecuted." 
"Blessed is he that endureth temptations." "Blessed are 
the dead which die in the Lord," or who die like their 
Lord to all the life of the old proprium. They "rest from 
their labors" only because the old proprium is conquered 
and fights no longer. 

So convinced is Mr. P. that all Christians should be always 
happy, as angels are supposed to be, which they are not (see 
H. & H. 155), that he objects seriously to the words of the 
Litany, "Be merciful unto us, miserable sinners." He thinks 
a man has a good excuse for staying outside of the church, 
when those inside of it consider themselves and each other 
"miserable sinners." Has he forgotten the publican who 
smote upon his breast, using those memorable words, and 
" went down to his house justified rather than the other " ? 

This writer seems to have no clear conception of the regen- 
eration of the soul, as an organic process of continual death 
and resurrection, life-long and indeed perpetual, whereby the 
selfhood is continually being subordinated to the influent 
goodness and wisdom of the divine life. It is not a question 
of looking to Jesus or believing in Jesus, but a question of 
cleansing the foul chambers of the heart, of scourging the 
thieves out of the temple, so that the Lord Jesus can enter 
in and abide. The Lord can only enter into a man in pro- 
portion as the selfhood or proprium goes out ; and the only 
sure way to receive the kingdom of heaven within us, which 



SHALL WE KNOW OURSELVES? 85 

alone is religion, is to explore "the depths of Satan " in our 
souls, to expose him, repudiate him, and cast him out so far 
as it is possible. 

The regeneration of man is a continual putting off of the 
old carnal nature, analogous to the progressive glorification of 
the Lord by his renunciation of the life derived from the mo- 
ther. And he who is continually sounding the depth of his 
nature, and still finding some lower and more hideous depth, 
until he sinks in humiliation and despair, is more surely fol- 
lowing his Lord in the regeneration, than the man who insists 
upon building a tabernacle on the Mount of Transfiguration, 
and gazing forever on the heavenly vision. 

The way of the Christian, however, is not all warfare and 
darkness. The nights are alternated with glorious days, the 
winters with beautiful and prolific summers. We have little 
sabbath states scattered all along, sometimes every day, full of 
peace and love and prophetic insight. Sometimes these states 
are of long duration, and we are fed with " the hidden manna.' ' 
But all these are the legitimate, organic fruits of battles fought 
and victories won. 

Mr. P. gives the worst possible advice. It is the voice of 
them that " prophesy smooth things. " It is the voice of them 
that cry, " Peace, peace ! " when there is no peace. He has 
not touched the true cause of the languor and unfaithfulness 
of the Christian world. Old-Church people are looking faith- 
fully to Jesus, each in his own way : New-Church people are 
looking, amid a blaze of spiritual light, to the Divine Hu- 
manity, and yet matters apparently grow worse and worse. 
What is the reason ? It is because they are all moving in a 
vain show ; having no genuine interior self-knowledge, and 
shrinking from its acquisition \ with covered up and concealed 



86 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

propriuins, and no consciousness of the hells within; thinking 
they are increased with goods and have need of nothing, when 
they are poor, and miserable, and blind, and naked. 

We do not want religious ecstasies ; but self-discovery, con- 
trition, repentance, humiliation, despair, and that death which 
leads to resurrection and the new life. We cannot exchange 
the pure gold of Swedenborg's teachings for the inflated cur- 
rency of modern revivalism. 

Yours truly, 

■W. H. H. 



LETTER IX. 

SWEDENBORG AND PAUL ON THE NEW BIRTH, AND THE 
GRAND MAN. 



M 



' Y DEAR MADAM :— I am glad that you have discovered 
the beautiful truth that Paul and Swedenborg are very, 
very near together on all the vital questions of the re- 
ligious life : and that the Epistles of that great Apostle, pictur- 
ing, as they do, the life and faith of the infant Church of 
Jesus, are inexpressibly dear and valuable to you. I always 
feel sorry when I hear a Newchurchman depreciate these ex- 
cellent writings, because it displays quite as great ignorance 
of Swedenborg as it does of Paul. I expect in this letter to 
show that Swedenborg, on the subject of the new birth and 
the new life, is more thoroughly orthodox or in harmony with 
Paul, than all the commentators who have formulated the doc- 
trines of the old church from the teachings of that great au- 
thority. 

When a sinner in common parlance becomes a saint, the ap- 
pearance is, that, convinced of the folly and danger of his 
ways, he reforms, compels himself to obey the dictates of reason 
and truth, and gradually eradicates his evil tempers, habituates 
himself to good courses, and finally, by the operation of the 
Holy Spirit, undergoes a thorough and total change of char- 
acter. It is supposed that there is an organic, radical modifi- 
cation of the very spiritual substance of the man, so that the 
old being has become a new being. The leopard has changed 
his spots, the Ethiopian his skin. The bad man 1ms become 

S7 



88 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

a good man, in spite of the declaration of the Master, " there 
is none good but God." 

That this is no misstatement of the orthodox conception of 
the new birth or the new man, is evident from the following 
quotations : 

A great Presbyterian minister defines it thus: "a super- 
natural change wrought upon the whole nature of the sinner, 
in the transformation of that inner disposition which gives 
color and tone to every act, which is brought at once under 
the controlling power of holiness. 7 ' 

A still greater Methodist divine says : " The new birth is the 
change wrought in the whole soul by the almighty Spirit of 
God, when it is ' created anew in Christ Jesus : ' when it is ' re- 
newed after the image of God in righteousness and true holi- 
ness/ when the love of the world is changed into the love of 
God, pride into humility, passion into meekness ; hatred, envy, 
malice, into a sincere, tender, disinterested love for all man- 
kind. In a word, it is that change by which the earthly, sen- 
sual, devilish mind is turned into ' the mind which was in 
Christ Jesus.' " 

Now this conception of the new birth based upon appear- 
ances, is absolutely and utterly false — false according to Swe- 
denborg, false according to Paul. This misconception of the 
genuine truth has been, no doubt, the cause of a great deal of 
self-righteousness, spiritual pride, and ecclesiastical bigotry. 
It leads us to appropriate the goodness of the Lord to our- 
selves, and makes us spiritual thieves. It is impossible for a 
man to remain in genuine organic states of humility, who thinks 
and feels that he is of a peculiarly advanced and endowed spirit- 
ual nature (even if it be the free gift and grace of God), and 
therefore fetter and wiser than others. The holier-than-thou 
spirit will insensibly creep in, and with it a subtle, self-corn- 



SWEDENBORG AND PAUL. 89 

placent sense of superiority, a desire to dictate or control, or 
even a secret contempt for others. In a highly cultivated 
nature, this suppressed proprium may go on ravaging the in- 
terior life, like " the worm in the bud/' entirely concealed 
from the victim himself as well as from others. This accounts 
for what John Wesley said of William Law, the great Christian 
perfectionist, % r ho devoted his whole time to prayers and char- 
ities ; that Law was a very good and holy man, but if you dif- 
fered from him in opinion, he would trample you under foot ! 
And this is always more or less true of the suppressed proprium. 

Now, dear madam, let us look steadily at the genuine truth. 
Our natural and sensuous life exists upon a discrete degree lower 
than the spiritual life. It is not continuous with it, cannot be 
turned into it, and is only connected with it by correspond- 
ence. It is the plane of our earthly existence, of the world 
of spirits and of the hells. It is the plane of the old proprium, 
of the old man, the old Adam, the plane of reaction and re- 
sistance to spiritual things. It may be made to serve and cor- 
respond to the intuitions of the spiritual life above it ; but it 
can never be spiritualized. The heart of stone may be re- 
moved, and a heart of flesh may be created in us, but never 
can the one be turned into the other. 

That the two lives, or centres of affection and thought, 
exist on discrete planes, so that one cannot become the other, 
is thus clearly taught in the Scriptures. 

"That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is 
born of the Spirit is spirit" — John iii. 6. 

" Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, 
nor of the will of man, but of God." — John i. 13. 

" To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded 
is life and peace : 



90 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

"Because the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is 
not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." — Rom. 
viii. 6-7. 

" For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no 
good thing" — Rom. vii. 18. 

" The first man is of the earth, earthy ; the second man is 
the Lord from heaven." — 1 Cor. xv. 47. 

"Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nei- 
ther doth corruption inherit mcorruption." — 1 Cor. xv. 50. 

" Though our outward man perish, yet our inward man is 
renewed day by day." — 2 Cor. iv. 16. 

" The flesh lustelh against the Spirit, and the Spirit against 
the flesh; and these are contrary, the one to the other" — Gal. 
v. 17. 

"But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit 
of God : for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he 
know them, because they are spiritually discerned." — 1 Cor. 
ii. 14. 

Swedenborg teaches that the evil and false states of our sen- 
sual and natural life, are never changed into good and true 
states — are only put off or removed and are never destroyed, 
but remain quiescent even in the angels, like things forgotten 
but which circumstances may recall. The new states of good 
and truth — the new life inserted — are not the old states and 
the old life reformed, but are absolutely a new creation, the 
opening of an interior degree, the formation from the Lord's 
Divine Humanity of a new will and a new understanding. 
This new life born in us from above, and felt absolutely as 
our own (although it is not ours but the Lord's in us), is pure 
and holy, the image and life of God in us, capable of sitting 
"in heavenly places with Christ Jesus," or of inauguration 
into the order, uses, and felicities of heaven. 

"All the evils which man derives from his parents which 



SWEDENBORG AND PAUL. 9 1 

we call hereditary evils, reside in his natural and sensual man, 
but not in the spiritual : hence it is that the natural man and 
especially the sensual man is opposed to the spiritual, for the 
spiritual man is closed from infancy, and is only opened and 
formed by divine truths received in the understanding and 
the will; and in proportion as the spiritual man is opened 
and formed, and according to the quality thereof, in the same 
proportion are the evils of the natural and sensual man re- 
moved, and goods implanted in their place." — A. E. 543. 

" Every man is born into two diabolical loves, namely, the 
love of self and the love of the world, from which loves all 
evils and falsities flow as from their fountains : and as man is 
born into those loves, he is also born into evils of every kind. 
Inasmuch as man as to his proprium is of such a nature, the 
Lord in his divine mercy has provided means by which he 
may be removed from it. These means are furnished in the 
Word, and when man acts in accordance with them, that is, 
when he speaks and thinks, wills and acts from the Divine 
Word, then he is kept by the Lord in things divine, and thus is 
withheld from his proprium : and as he perseveres in this, a 
new proprium as it were, both voluntary and intellectual, is 
formed in him by the Lord, which is altogether separated fro7?i 
his own proprium. Thus man is, as it were, created anew ; 
and this is what is called his reformation and regeneration by 
truths from the Word, and by a life according to them." — 
A. E. 585. 

Now, my dear friend, see how clearly and beautifully Paul 
teaches the New-Church doctrine of the new life. 

" Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature ; 
old things are passed away : all things are become new : 

" And all things are of God" — 2 Cor. v. 17. 

" Our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified 
unto me, and L unto the world : 

"For in Christ Jesus, ?ieither circumcision availeth anything, 
nor uncircumcision, but a new creature." — Gal. vi. 14. 15. 



92 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

"For we are his work??ianship, created in Christ Jesus unto 
good works '." — Eph. ii. 10. 

" That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old 
man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts : 

"And be renewed in the spirit of your mind : 

" And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created 
in righteousness and true holiness ." — Eph. iv. 22-24. 

" Seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds ; 

" And have put on the new man which is renewed in knowl- 
edge after the image of Him that created him" — Col. iii. 9, 
10. 

' ' There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are 
in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the 
Spirit." — Rom. viii. 1. 

Now, Old-church theologians have studied and quoted all 
these sentences thousands of times, bringing them to bear in 
illustration and confirmation of their special tenets. The Old- 
churchman says our good life, or " the fruit of the Spirit," 
flows from the righteousness of Christ imputed to us. The 
Newchurchman thinks that the righteousness is really imparted 
to us. Both parties, however, remain in the same miserable 
delusion of appearances, and think and teach that some really 
thorough and heavenly change has taken place in us, and that 
something has become ours which we had not before — so that 
there must be various differences as to goodness and truth in 
our own essential nature. They do not face the stupendous 
statements made by both Paul and Swedenborg, that good- 
ness is never ours, but always the Lord's in us ; that there are 
no good or holy men, but only men in whom the Holy Spirit 
is more or less immanent and indwelling. It is an appear- 
ance that the Lord gives us good desires and wise thoughts to 
be in perpetuum our actual property. The truth is, that when 



SWEDENBORG AND PAUL. 93 

we open our hearts and minds to the Lord, He enters into 
our inmost organic life — feels good desires and entertains wise 
thoughts, according to the media into which He has entered, 
and permits us to feel and enjoy this, his own finited love and 
wisdom, as if it were our own and self-originated. How this 
is done may be forever as obscure to us as the new birth was 
to Nicodemus ; but the fact is revealed by Paul, and state- 
ments of great scientific precision are made about it by Swe- 
denborg. 

" Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the 
Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any mail have not the 
Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." — Rom. viii. 9. 

" But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not pro- 
vision for the flesh. ' ' — Rom. xiii . 1 4. 

"But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made 
unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sancliflcalion, and re- 
demption" — 1 Cor. 1. 30. 

"Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy 
Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not 
your own ?" — 1 Cor. vi. 19. 

" The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is 
the Lord from heaven." — 1 Cor. xv. 47. 

"Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord 
Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our 
body." — 2 Cor. iv. 10. 

" Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in 
you, except ye be reprobate ?" — 2 Cor. xiii. 5. 

" It pleased God, .... to reveal his Son in me " — Gal. 
i. 15, 16. 

" / am crucified with Christ : nevertheless I live : yet not I, 
but Christ liveth in me." — Gal. ii. 20. 

"As many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have 
put on Christ." — Gal. iii. 27. 

" Until Christ be formed in you " — Gal. iv. 19. 



94 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

"In whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of 
God, through the Spirit." — Eph. ii. 22. 

"It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do." 
— Phil. ii. 13. 

" The mystery which hath been hid from ages and from gen- 
erations, but now is made manifest to his saints ; . . . 

"Which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." — Col. i. 26, 
27. 

" For ye are dead, arid your life is hid with Christ in God." 
— Col. iii. 3. 

How utterly have they failed to grasp the meaning of these 
magnificent sentences, who suppose that the Holy Spirit im- 
parts the virtues and graces of the Christian life to the soul, 
so that it becomes good and wise and holy, and who do not 
see that our own life is always utterly evil and dead, and that 
the new life is not our own, but is Christ formed in us, the 
Lord from heaven, God willing and doing through us, the 
Lord Jesus manifesting his own life through our organic 
media, so that we are nothing, and He is all in all ! Swe- 
denborg teaches all this very clearly and beautifully, as the 
following extracts show. The italics are mine. 

"Everyone in the heavens knows and believes, yea, per- 
ceives, that he wills and does nothing of good from himself, 
and that he thinks and believes nothing of truth from him- 
self, but from the Divine, that is, from the Lord ; and that 
the good and truth which are from himself are not good and 
truth, because there is not in them life from the Divine." 

"Because the angels believe thus, they refuse all thanks on 
account of the good they do, and are indignant and recede, if 
any one attributes good to them. They wonder that any one 
should believe that he is wise from himself, and that he does 
good from himself. To do good for the sake of one's self 
they do not call good, because it is done from self: but to do 



SWEDEXDORG AND PAUL. 95 

good for the sake of good they call good from the Divine ; and 
say that this good is what makes heaven, because it is the Lord. \ ' 

" Those spirits who, while they were in the world, confirmed 
themselves in the belief that the good which they do and the 
truth which they believe are from themselves, or are appropri- 
ated to them as their own, in which belief are all those who 
place merit in good actions, and claim righteousness to them- 
selves, are not received into heaven. The angels avoid them ; 
they regard them as stupid and as thieves \ as stupid because 
they continually look to themselves, and not to the Divine ; 
and as thieves, because they take from the Lord what is his. 
These are against the faith of heaven that the Divine of the 
Lord with the angels makes heaven." 

"That those are in the Lord, and the Lord in them, who 
are in heaven and in the church, the Lord also teaches by say- 
ing : ' Abide in me and 1 in you : as the branch camiot bear 
fruit of itself unless it abide in the vine, so neither can ye un- 
less ye abide in me. L am the vine, ye are the branches : he 
that abideth in me and L in him, the same beareth much fruit; 
for without ?ne ye can do nothing.' " — John xv. 4, 5. 

" From these things it is now evident that the Lord dwells 
in his own with the angels of heaven, and thus that the Lord 
is the all in all of heaven : and this because good from the Lord 
is the Lord with them, for what is from Him is Himself: con- 
sequently good from the Lord is heaven to the angels, and not 
anything proper to themselves." — H. H. 8-12. 

Now, my dear friend, if you would see still more clearly that 
our own proprium is utterly evil and false, and can never be 
spiritualized, or made good and true ; that it must be separated 
and put off; that the new life which comes in its place is not 
the old life reformed, but a "new creature,'' the Lord Him- 
self formed in us, and abiding with us, and working through 
us (the very doctrines of Paul), I advise you to consult stu- 
diously the following references to Swedenborg. 



96 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

Every man, spirit and angel, as to his proprium, is mere 
evil, and left to himself, breathes nothing but hatreds, revenges, 
cruelties, and adulteries. — A. C. 987. 

Man is so entirely evil that he cannot be fully delivered from 
so much as one sin to eternity ; but by the mercy of the Lord, 
he may be withheld from evil and held in good. — A. C. 5398. 

Before regeneration, man is possessed as to his natural part 
by evil spirits, and all his delights are really infernal howso- 
ever holy they appear. — A. C. 3928. 

The proprium of every one resides in the sensual and the 
natural plane of life, not in the spiritual. — A. E. 355, 483. 

A regenerate man is altogether another man, a new man, and 
he is said to be born anew, created anew. This is really the 
case, though he remains the same as to the features of the body. 
Nevertheless every evil remains, and is only removed from sight. 
—A. C. 3212, 4564, 5113. 

The procedure of regeneration is similar to the procedure 
of the Lord when He made his human Divine : indeed so far as 
man is created anew, he has the Divine as it were in himself, 
only nothing is done by his own power. — A. C. 3043, 3057. 

Good and truth from the Lord cannot be appropriated to 
any angel or man as his own, any more than life from the Lord : 
hence they are given to the regenerate who receive a heavenly 
proprium, as if their own, though not actually so. — A. C. 8497. 

The Lord dwells in his own, thus in what is divine in man, 
and not in the proprium of any one. — A. C. 9338. 

The internal man is the celestial proprium given by the 
Lord, and therefore spoken of as man's own ; but it is of the 
Lord — yea, it is the Lord with him. — A. C. 1594. 

The internal man is of the Lord, yea, is the Lord Himself 
in all men \ and when their external is quiescent, the angels 
know no otherwise than that they are the Lord. — A. C. 1745. 



SWEDENBORG AND PAUL. 97 

Paul recognized the fact that our righteousness is not our 
own, something given to us to have and to hold ; but that it 
is the Lord's life in us, manifested according to our reception 
of it and our organic capacities of bringing it into action. 
He therefore detected the great truth that the church upon 
earth, which is the Lord's heaven in ultimates, is spiritually 
united in all its parts and powers, on the principles that govern 
the human body. The church with him is the body of Christ, 
of which the Divine Man is the living and actuating soul. He 
here also approaches Swedenborg's stupendous revelation of 
the structure or form of the heavens as a Grand Man. 

If our goodness and truth were actually our own, and we 
used and directed them according to our own desires and our 
own self-derived intelligence, there never could be any fixed 
and unitizing principle, or true and perfect bond of co-opera- 
tive action. It is exactly because we think and act upon this 
false belief, that there is no unity in our societies or churches; 
and instead of the supreme order and harmony which the 
Divine presence must always produce, we have the repulsions 
and chaos which the selfhood invariably inaugurates. All our 
very best religious activities are tainted with the proprium, 
and to celestial perceptions have the smell of the pit about 
them, until we cease to think and act of, and from, and for 
ourselves, and recognize the Lord as the only working power 
for good and truth in ourselves and our neighbor. Then only 
' can we begin to comprehend and realize the stupendous truths 
taught us by Paul and Swedenborg. 

"For as the body is one and hath many members, and all the 
members of that one body, being many, are one body : so also is 
Christ. 

' l For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether 
9 G 



98 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free, and have 
been all made to drink into one Spirit. 

"For the body is not one member, but many. 11 — 1 Cor. xii. 
12-14. 

"Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. 1 7 
— 1 Cor. xii. 27. 

"The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the 
body of Christ ? For we, being many, are one bread and one 
body; for we are all partakers of that one bread. 11 — 1 Cor. x. 
16, 17. 

"For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his 
bones. 11 — Eph. v. 30. 

Now hear some of the similar but more explicit and sub- 
lime revelations made through Swedenborg: — 

The societies of heaven are innumerable, and they are all 
various; yet they make one whole because they are led by the 
Lord as one. — A. C. 1285, 1316. 

The heavens are altogether an image of the Lord's external 
man. — A. C. 1590. 

The whole heaven appears before the Lord as a Grand Man, 
because the Lord Himself is all in all there. — A. C. 1894, 1276. 

The Lord is not only in heaven, but He is heaven. — A. C. 
2859. 

It is the Divine Human of the Lord that flows in and makes 
heaven and the church. — A. C. 3038. 

The angels are in the Lord and in heaven, because the 
Lord as to the Divine Human reigns universally in all things 
of their thought and will. They perceive it to be so, and 
love to have it so. — A. C. 8865. 

They who are in heaven are in the Lord, yea, in his body. 
—A. C. 3637-8. 



SWEDENBORG AND PAUL. 99 

The church in general also appears before the Lord as one 
man, and the regenerate individual is a heaven and a church 
in its least form. — A. C. 2853, 9276-9. 

That which makes heaven makes also the church in man. 
— A. C. 10,760. 

The Lord Himself is heaven and the church, thus all in all 
— dwelling everywhere in his own goods and truths, and not 
in the proprium of any. — A. C. 10,125, IO ? I 5 I - 

All men who are in the Lord's church, however dispersed 
throughout the globe, make spiritually one, even as in the 
heavens. — A. C. 2859. 

Now, my dear friend, we can only be partakers of this 
spiritual solidarity — this perfect body of Christ, by becoming 
ourselves a miniature church, a miniature heaven : and this 
can only be effected by the willing and total surrender of the 
selfhood or old proprium, by that profound humiliation of 
spirit in which alone the Lord can be present, by a continual 
acknowledgment of his Divine Humanity, by incessantly open- 
ing our hearts and minds to his divine influx, so that, breath- 
ing in us and through us, He may enable us always to believe 
his Word and to keep his commandments. 

Let us all earnestly seek to be thus made one with Christ, 
even as He was made one with the Father. 

Yours affectionately, W. H. H. 



LETTER X. 

ANSWER TO INQUIRIES ABOUT THE NEW LIFE. 



M' 



"Y DEAR MADAM: — Your interesting letter was duly 
received and considered, and I reply with great pleasure, 
hoping to be useful to you and perhaps to others, for 
sometimes even a hint is of service. 

In the first place let us read over what you say about your- 
self and your experiences. 

" I 've been happier ever since for meeting you. A shadowy 
hope has cheered me ever since, that I might yet sometime 
learn to know the Lord as you do. I suppose you will say 
there is no doubt about it. I cannot as yet be so sure. 

" I am so old — older than you probably would guess — much 
older than I feel. The habits of a lifetime are not so easily 
changed. I, who have all these years made self the prominent 
object of regard (while many times I thought it dying or 
dead), how can I ever learn to worship at another shrine? 

"Three distinct religious phases I have seemed to pass 
through: First: In my ' teens, 6 converted/ rapturously happy 
to find myself among the blessed few, whom 'God out of his 
mere good pleasure from all eternity had elected to everlasting 
life'! 

"Ah! I was a whited sepulchre, a self-righteous Pharisee! 
and I never knew it, — I did not dream it. 

"Thirteen years ago there came the second change, when, 
in accordance with the advice of my spiritual instructors, I 
'reckoned myself dead unto sin' because I claimed that 



INQUIRIES ABOUT THE NEW LIFE ANSWERED. IOI 

condition by faith, though altogether contrary to my con- 
sciousness. 

"Then too, self, though I did not know it, was uppermost, 
and thoroughly alive. 

" Eight years ago came the third crisis in my life. It was 
a genuine and complete change in my modes of thought and 
feeling. Perhaps it took out of me a little of the hypocrisy, 
but otherwise I look vainly for such fruit as I should bear. 
I allude to the beginning of my acquaintance with the writings 
of Swedenborg, which intellectually have been my greatest 
delight. Can they ever be more to me than that? 

"I am amazingly, detestably, horribly selfish. It seems 
too much to hope that the Lord can or will come into my 
life and enable me 'to walk even as He walked/ though such 
a state seems to me blessed and desirable — infinitely beyond 
any other. 

"But admitting one so selfish, so weak, so vacillating, so 
blinded by the senses, may hope to attain this blessedness, what 
experiences must be passed through before its attainment ? ' ' 

Now, my dear friend, you have gone through several phases 
of religious belief and experience, and find your past and 
present life entirely unsatisfactory. You have grand and 
beautiful spiritual ideals, but they seem very far off, and im- 
possible for you to realize. You are thoroughly disgusted with 
self and selfishness, and would gladly get rid of them, but feel 
that you are too old in evil ever to hope it. You yearn after 
a state of Christian perfection, but you are so profoundly 
conscious of your emptiness and helplessness, that you only 
wish to be taught how to begin the new life. You distrust all 
unusual experiences as mere outbursts of enthusiasm. 

Truly, in my eves, these are hopeful signs that you are already 
9* 



102 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

growing and strengthening in the new life. How can we 
judge of our interior states which are known to the Lord 
alone ? Is not the new life the leaven which was hid in three 
measures of meal ? Is it not the seed which springs up and 
grows, no man knows how? Is it not the wind blowing where 
it listeth, of whose coming and going we know nothing ? Is 
it not the child concealed in its mother's womb, and growing 
to perfection bylaws and processes of which we are ignorant? 
We are commanded to judge not ; and especially not to judge 
according to appearances. This law is as applicable to our 
judgment of ourselves as to our judgment of others. 

Are you not too hasty in saying you are too old for much 
improvement?. What have time and space, which are incident 
to nature, to do with spiritual evolutions? You never will be 
old or die. A million years hence, by our earthly computation, 
you will be younger than you are now. It is not a question 
of time, but of state. What states of affection and thought do 
you love, and endeavor to make permanent in your life? Those 
states which you earnestly seek, you will surely find ; those 
which you repudiate and reject, will certainly recede from you 
after a while and disappear forever. The providences of life 
are designed to remove the natural obstructions of the false 
and the evil, which prevent the "remains" of goodness and 
truth, stored away in our infancy, from coming down into our 
external life and conduct. This rarely happens to any one 
until middle life, sometimes not until old age, and in the vast 
majority of cases not until the unfoldings of the world of 
spirits bring the true life to the surface by casting off its 
externals. 

You are discouraged by constantly discovering new traits 
of selfishness, "the depths of Satan" within you. Now, my 



INQUIRIES ABOUT THE NEW LIFE ANSWERED. IO3 

dear friend, you may study that old Adam forever, and you 
will never find any good in him. The leopard cannot change 
his spots nor the Ethiopian his skin. Selfish ? hypocritical ? 
ambitious ? of course you are : and if circumstances and sur- 
roundings were favorable and the heavenly powers did not 
withhold you, you would burst out shamelessly and joyously 
into blasphemy, lying, stealing, murder, and all uncleanness; 
nor would you be any worse than any other man or woman, 
or indeed than any angel in any of the heavens, for doing so ; 
for under the same conditions they would all do the same 
things. 

Now this old life of the proprium, which seems so strongly 
to be your own, is not entirely yours. Indeed it would be 
yours in a very slight degree, if you did not deliberately 
receive it, approve it, and appropriate it. Your natural life is 
the concentrated essence of hell, flowing through your heredi- 
tary principle, and endeavoring to fasten itself upon you. 
You have a perfect right to repudiate its suggestions, as not 
belonging to yourself, and to say always, "Get thee behind 
me, Satan ! ' ' Happy is the man whose sins are uncovered, 
so that he knows the hell within him. Still happier is he, 
when he learns to reject the influx of evil spirits, to separate 
himself from them, to deny their accusations, repudiate their 
sentiments, and disclaim all participation in their affections 
and thoughts. He is then entering into states of true free- 
dom. 

But what is this something within ourselves, which resists 
and repudiates that influent evil life, which seems so strongly 
to be our own ? It is certainly not a part of that evil life. It 
is certainly not something self-originated, self-created. No : 
it is the Lord with his holy angels coming down to us. It is 



104 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

Immanuel — " God with us." It is the new life, "born, not 
of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, 
but of God r 

" Ye will not come unto Me that ye might have life." 

" The bread which I will give, is my flesh, which I will 
give for the life of the world" 

Now this " new life " in us never did nor can commit any 
sin. " Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin." It 
is not our own life, although we are permitted to feel as if it 
were really ours. But if we claim it as ours, and thereby pro- 
fess ourselves to be clean and pure and holy and perfect, we 
are thieves and liars, robbing God of his glory, and the truth 
is not in us. The fruit of such a state is self-righteousness 
and hypocrisy. No man can remain in that state of profound 
humility, in which alone the Lord is present with man, so 
long as he imagines that he has been made clean, and pure, 
and holy. The angels are indignant when called good and 
holy, and they use no such false compliments to each other. 
Our Christian obituaries would generally strike them with 
ineffable disgust. They take no credit for anything they do, 
for they know all good and truth are the Lord's. Professions 
and pretensions are utterly unknown to them, and the sphere 
of merit and self-assertion is hateful. The true "new life M 
is one like the angel's, and the prediction that the Lord will 
come "with his holy angels," means that the Second Advent 
will be attended with such organic conditions, that the 
angelic states of life will be made possible on earth. They 
are possible now, but they will generally be manifested among 
those who love and serve most, and who desire and talk 
least. 

Now I want to put you on the rack a little, and perhaps to 



INQUIRIES ABOUT THE NEW LIFE ANSWERED. 105 

surprise you. What is the secret reason of all this religious 
restlessness and aspiration on your part ? Why do you desire 
to be good and holy and perfect ? Is it because you have 
such an overwhelming sense of guilt, that you are trembling 
with the fear of hell, and would save your own soul ? Or is it 
because you have such an innate, organic antipathy to sin, 
that you would fly to the uttermost parts of the earth to escape 
its hated presence ? Or is it because the social rewards of 
"holiness " are very desirable in your sight? that you would 
like to be considered sweet and pure and perfect in your cir- 
cle — a shining monument of the love of God, and a paragon 
of Christian graces ? thus desiring, like the sons of Zebedee, 
to be first in the kingdom of heaven ? Is it not good and 
noble and right to desire to excel in all heavenly things? 
Are you sure of it ? Sound the depths of your heart and soul 
with these questions, remembering that the old proprium, in 
its selfishness and ambition, delights exceedingly to clothe 
itself in the garb of Christian humilities, aspirations, and 
activities. 

On the other hand, why should you take any care for to- 
morrow ? Why should you wish that any thought or will of 
your own should enter into, or any way determine, the adjust- 
ment or unfoldings of your future life ? Why not lay it all 
down, give it all up, leave it to the Lord alone, and wait pa- 
tiently upon Him ? Why should you desire to excel your 
fellow-beings, even in goodness? Why not be willing to 
make your bed in hell, if the Lord desired to manifest his 
presence and his power even there ? Empty yourself of self, 
and put nothing else in. Desire nothing. Simply shun all 
evil suggestions, ideas, and intentions, as sins against the 
Lord. He will then enable you to do his will. His will in 



106 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

regard to you is presented to you every day. His providence 
rules over everything that happens, even the most minute. 
Whatever your hands find to do, your heart to feel, your mind 
to think, your tongue to say, is sent to you every day by Him, 
and is all especially designed to fit you for his kingdom and 
to unite you with Himself. No matter whether it is great 
or small, agreeable or disagreeable, clear or obscure. Bend 
yourself to service. A child in spirit, a servant in work, 
looking always to the Lord. That is the way into the "new 
life.' , 

I congratulate you on having escaped the sphere of Predes- 
tination — a subject too hateful to contemplate ; and the more 
plausible but more dangerous sphere of "faith alone," a 
sphere which begets an exceedingly subtile self-righteousness, 
calculated to deceive the very elect. I congratulate you on 
having entered into the large, clear, sweet light of Sweden- 
borg. You will there surely find truth, strength, and peace. 
You seem at present to need, not so much the exposition of 
truth, as to be brought more directly into personal relations 
with the Lord, who now stands in ultimates. This will be 
best effected by prayer, and the heavenly atmosphere of the 
Evangelists — especially John. 

Now, my dear friend, I have said so little to the point on 
so vast a subject, that I seem to myself to have said almost 
nothing. If your spiritual needs require further utterances or 
expansions of thought, I am at your service for what little 
help I can render you. 

Yours truly, 

W. H. H. 



LETTER XI. 

THE INNER WAY.— JONES VERY. 

DEAR FRIENDS : — I wish to communicate to you and 
to others some thoughts which occurred to me while 
reading your review of my little book, " The l£nd of 
the World," in your serial, Words for the New Church, No. 
XL Disclaiming all thought or consideration of myself, 
either as man or author, I propose to survey the matter from 
the standpoint of the love of truth for its own sake and its 
uses to the neighbor. 

Unlike your New-Church cotemporaries, you recognize the 
"most important and timely service" the book has rendered, 
in "dashing away the veil of apparent truth and good, which 
hides the real state of Christendom, and showing in all their 
enormity the evils and falses beneath." If all men in all the 
churches could see and believe this their real condition, and 
could be thus brought into states of utter humiliation and de- 
spair, how soon would the face of the world be changed ! 
How are they to be approached and instructed in these terri- 
ble and most unacceptable revelations of their interior states? 
You believe such states exist, because you find that Sweden- 
borg, or the Lord through Swedenborg, has declared the facts 
in the most emphatic manner. What an infinitesimal portion 
of mankind is ready to accept the exposure of the hells within 
them on the authority of Swedenborg ! You cannot even 
get one in a hundred of the avowed receivers of the heavenly 

doctrines, to see these fearful truths as applicable to the old 

107 



108 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

church in themselves, so that they will take hold upon the life, 
and make them fight against the old proprium until it is truly 
subdued. 

Now, dear friends, there are two ways to arrive at truth. 
There is an interior way, whether you have discovered it or 
not, by which men are brought to a living perception of 
truths which have lain as dead material in the memory, or 
which may never have entered it at all. I had often read what 
Swedenborg affirms about the ineradicably evil state of the 
proprium, and the hopelessly evil and false condition of the 
Christian world. It made little impression upon me, and 
that a painful one ; for there seemed to me an air of unchari- 
tableness about it which I did not like. Nor did I attain to a 
clear perception of the truths announced in the "End of the 
World ' ' by a further, more assiduous study of Swedenborg, 
but by a process of introspection and personal experience: 
for each man is a miniature form of the universe, and all the 
heavens anc} all the hells rest upon him and flow into him ; 
and there are ways unknown to your scientific natural man, 
ignored by you also, whereby he can learn all things from 
within. 

I had been led by a series of providences through many 
varying states of evil and falsity, and many hideous tempta- 
tions, being truly in the wilderness with wild beasts, to a cul- 
mination of those states about five years ago, in one long, 
terrible condition of utter darkness, humiliation, and despair. 
Now I was delivered from this condition in the course of a 
few days, mainly in a single day (April 16, 1878), not to all 
appearance by any light of truth from Swedenborg or else- 
where, but by a realization of the presence of the Divine 
Man in ultimates — a Divine Natural Humanity standing right 



THE INNER WAY. IO9 

by me, ready to assume my states, if I would only utterly 
give myself up to Him, and to display his " power over all 
flesh n by immediately giving me the power to abstain from 
all sin. 

It is immaterial how you explain this phenomenon, whether 
as hallucination or fantasy, or the work of enthusiastic spirits, 
or the rational final issue of many temptation-combats in 
which I was sustained by truths derived in the past from Swe- 
denborg and the Word. This last is my own interpretation 
— but it appeared to me a sudden and a divine reality ; for I 
passed at once into an entirely new life, peaceful and lumi- 
nous, a sabbath state, which, with the exception of a few, 
brief assaults from the hells, has continued and grown steadily 
ever since. The Lord enters in proportion as self recedes, 
and He brings with Him heaven, the church, and the Word. 
I have learned from my own experience that the Lord Jesus 
Christ stands organically upon the earth, just as He did im- 
mediately after his resurrection, and nothing but our own 
clouds of evil and falsity hide Him from our eyes. All things 
are changed, and He comes now into the humble and con- 
trite heart without the aid of any institutions, sacraments, or 
churches, old or new. 

These experiences are open and free to all men ; and whoever 
seeks and finds them, will enter into larger liberty and ration- 
ality of thought, a life of more willing and perfect obedience, 
a tenderer charity, a clearer vision, a finer perception of truth, 
and a state of illustration from the Word, as Swedenborg calls 
it, of which he has now no conception. And the way to seek 
and find them, is to shun all known evils as sins against the 
Lord. 

The light from heaven which convicts us of sin and reveals 
10 



IIO LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

the unfathomable hells in our own hearts, renders us intensely 
sensitive to the spheres of the evil and the false emanating 
from others, whether from individuals or from associations of 
our fellow men. That is the process which enabled me to 
realize the truths unfolded in the "End of the World. " It 
is not we who judge in such cases, but the Spirit of Truth 
flowing into and through us that judges. The conjoined good 
in us leads us to regard those evil and false spheres with 
unbounded pity and sorrow, to excuse and palliate them in 
every possible manner, to see ourselves in them constantly 
reflected as from a mirror, and to entertain an unconquera- 
ble hope and faith that our merciful Lord will lead all men 
out of these terrible wildernesses into the light and peace of his 
own heavenly kingdom. In all my experiences, however, and 
study of the hells of modern life, I find no difference what- 
ever between New-Church and Old-Church people. Myself, 
my friends, the Convention, the Academy, were all under the 
same condemnation. Indeed, higher truths and better doc- 
trinals only condemn us more severely, because we have never 
manifested anything more Christ-like in our lives than the 
cheap and easy righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees. 

That this interior life, this inner light, this extreme sensi- 
tiveness to good and evil spheres, which reveals to us the 
hells within ourselves and others, and draws us nearer and 
nearer to the perception of New-Church doctrine, may be 
developed in the soul, without the ostensible agency of the 
writings of Swedenborg, but by the interior operations of the 
Holy Spirit ("if any man will do his will, he shall know 
of the doctrine "), is amply verified in the biographies of 
good men and women in all churches and at all times. One 
instance of recent unfolding is so clear an illustration, and so 
beautiful in itself, that I must say something about it. 



THE INNER WAY. Ill 

Jones Very, whose memoir and poems were recently pub- 
lished, was what Emerson calls "a detached, that is, a uni- 
versally associated man." Held by a mere external thread 
to the Unitarian Church, without any baptism into the New 
Church, or reception of the doctrines, or any of the parapher- 
nalia of ecclesiasticism which you think necessary to the de- 
velopment of the true Christian character, this man lived an 
angelic life, entirely free from the selfhood, walking even as 
Jesus walked, having learned with Fenelon and Guyon that 
all sin springs from self-will and all goodness from total and 
absolute acceptance of the will of God — after which the man 
himself is nothing; and the Christ is all and all in him, di- 
recting, guiding and leading him into all the truths requisite 
for his spiritual states and his uses in life. 

Emerson, who was an intimate friend of this rare and deli- 
cate genius, and who, half-pagan as he was, appreciated him 
more clearly than many of his most Christian friends, tells 
some good things about him, from which I extract a few sen- 
tences. 

" His position accuses society as much as society calls that 
false and morbid; and much of his discourse concerning so- 
ciety, church, and college was absolutely just/ ' 

" He says it is with him a day of hate (not of persons but 
of principles), that he discerns the bad element in every per- 
son whom he meets, which repels him ; he even shrinks a lit- 
tle to give the hand, that sign of receiving. The institutions, 
the cities which men have built the world over, look to him 
like a huge ink-blot. His only guard in going to see men is, 
that he goes to do them good, else they would injure him 
spiritually. He would obey — obey. He is not disposed to 
attack religions or charities though false. The bruised reed 
he would not break, nor quench the smoking flax." 



112 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

"A very accurate discernment of spirits belongs to his 
state, and he detects at once the presence of an alien ele- 
ment, though he cannot tell whence, how or whereto it is. 
. . . When he is in the room with other persons, speech stops, 
as if there were a corpse in the apartment. ... In the woods 
he said to me : c One might forget here that the world was 
desert and empty and all the people wicked.' . . . When he 
was in Concord, he said to me : ' I always felt when I heard 
you speak, or read your writings, that you saw the truth bet- 
ter than others ; yet I felt that your spirit was not quite right. 
It was as if a vein of colder air blew across me.' ' 

" Jones Very has gone into the multitude as solitary as Jesus. 
In dismissing him, I seem to have discharged an arrow into 
the heart of society. Wherever that young enthusiast goes, 
he will astonish and disconcert men by dividing for them the 
cloud that covers the gulf in man." 

It is the work of spiritual truth to divide the cloud which 
covers the infernal gulf of the proprium in ourselves and others, 
and to bring us all into judgment. When spiritual truth is 
conjoined to celestial good, they produce the obedient, humble, 
trustful, loving soul that shone out in the person of Jones 
Very. "To have walked with Very," said a brother clergy- 
man, "was truly to have walked with God." " I told my 
people," said an eloquent preacher, "that to see Very for 
half an hour in any pulpit, and know that such a man existed 
in the world, was a far greater sermon than any ever preached 
to them from the lips of an orator." 

"He was as good," said a life-long friend, "as goodness 
itself, as true as truth. With his knowledge and wisdom, he 
was as simple as a child, transparent, artless. He was at the 
extremest possible distance from pomposity or pretension. 
When he believed that the poetry which came to him like the 



THE INNER WAY. 113 

breath of heaven, did actually come from heaven, it was so 
naturally and simply said, that you felt it was his profoundest 
conviction. He believed fully and intensely that the Lord 
of life gave it to him. It was a sacred idea, a divine reality.' ' 

"This nearness of the Divine Presence/ ' says his biographer, 
" was the great fact of his life. He felt it to be so intensely 
real and vital, that he was inexpressibly grieved as he looked 
around among his fellows for men who thus walked with God, 
to find how much alone he stood ; and he breaks out into a 
wail of lamentation that men are dead to the glory around 
them/' etc. 

" His own intense, contemplative piety had lifted him out 
of what he regarded as the ' grave ' of the senses, above the 
world, into that condition of ' inward peace, the sweet 
patience' which the Buddhist calls Nirvana." 

When this beautiful soul, departing like the man who told 
the Jews that it was Jesus who made him whole, preached the 
annihilation of self-will as the true road to peace, goodness, 
and spiritual illumination, to the social and ecclesiastical 
circles about him, he was pronounced insane by many. He 
put himself of his own accord into a private asylum, where 
the physical excitement and consequent prostration induced 
in so exquisitely sensitive a nature by the opposition and 
persecution he encountered, were speedily relieved. 

He was about as insane as Swedenborg or my friend G. W. C. 

The Rev. Dr. Clarke, who saw him at that time, declared it to 

be a case of mono-sania rather than mono-mania : and Ralph 

Waldo Emerson wrote that he regarded him as "profoundly 

sane" and "wished the whole world were as mad as he." 

Rev. Dr. Channing said: "He had not lost his reason, but 

only held his senses, his lower faculties, in abeyance. Men 
10* H 



I 14 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

in general have lost or never found this higher mind : their 
insanity is profound, Mr. Very's is only superficial. To hear 
him talk was like looking into the purely spiritual world, into 
truth itself. He had nothing of self-exaggeration, but seemed 
to have attained self-annihilation and become an oracle of 
God." 

Now, dear friends of the Academy, neither this man's 
biographer nor his friends possessed the key to the secret of 
his life and character. That is found only in the writings of 
Swedenborg. Nor is that man capable of finding it in Sweden- 
borg, who can be satisfied with the solution of "enthusiastic 
spirits," because Mr. Very was not a Swedenborgian. No 
man encased in the hard shell of doctrine, and believing the 
life of charity is impossible without an external revealed basis 
of faith, can ever find that key. This was one of those partial 
and imperfect cases of the opening of the celestial degree of 
life into the external consciousness, which are increasing in 
the world under greatly varied forms, and which are feebly 
illustrative but profoundly prophetic of the coming of the 
celestial church — " the Bride, the Lamb's wife." 

This man, who was both proof and sample of the descent 
of the New Jerusalem by the internal way of perception, had 
no idea of the causes of his intuitions and illuminations. He 
lived in states of simple faith, absolute obedience, and utter 
self-abnegation. He evidently thought and cared little about 
doctrines or forms, because the divine influxes passed through 
the will directly into the life and conduct. He not only 
believed, as we do from doctrine, that all good and truth 
flow from the Lord and are the Lord's in man, but he felt it 
sensatioitally and co?tsciously, and therefore declared that the 
Lord lived in him and spoke through him. This state, pro- 



THE INNER WAY. 115 

nounced insanity by the natural man of the world and the 
church, is simply the permanent state of angels as described 
by Swedenborg. 

Your position is, that the Lord is not coming by internal in- 
flux, but by external revelation and preaching thence : that the 
interiors of the whole human race are utterly evil and false, 
and there is no salvation but by the implantation in the ex- 
ternal mind of the doctrines revealed through Swedenborg, 
and the development of the good to which they lead. You 
are clearly right as to the necessity of the implantation of 
truths in the external way ; but I am sure you are in great error 
when you ignore the goods and truths descending from the 
New Church in the heavens, and struggling in all human hearts 
and minds to find the natural basis of sound doctrine which 
has been revealed in the writings of Swedenborg. I beg you 
to study and compare the following general truths which I have 
culled from our great authority in spiritual things. If any man 
will reason from them as centres of thought, he will be led by 
their own light to clear, broad, and beautiful conceptions of 
the New Church and the Second Coming. 

Revelation is internal perception, and is from perception. — 
A. C. 5111. 

All revelation is either from discourse with angels by whom 
the Lord speaks, or from perception. — A. C. 5 121. 

They have revelation from perception which is internal reve- 
lation, who are in good, and from good in truth. — A. C. 5 121. 

Those who are in good and in the desire of truth, have reve- 
lation when they read the Word, and this by illustration and 
perception derived therefrom. — A. C. 8694. 

The Word reveals itself by holy influx to all who are in 
good \ and when it is not received, the fault is with those who 



Il6 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

read it, in consequence of the opposition of their interiors. — 
A. C. 8971. 

Had the man of the Most Ancient Church read the prophet- 
ical or historical Word, he would have seen the internal sense 
without any previous instruction. — A. C. 4493- 

The man who is in good thinks spiritually, thus according 
to the internal sense of the Word, even though ignorant of 
the fact.— A. C. 5478. 

When the good of the rational flows into the natural man, 
it produces truths almost as the life produces fibres in the body. 
—A. C. 3579. 

Men who are in love and charity have angelic wisdom in 
themselves, but they can only perceive it obscurely whilst they 
live in the body. — A. C. 2494. 

The Church would be one if all had charity, although they 
should differ as to worship and doctrinals : thus charity con- 
stitutes the Church, not doctrinals. — A. C. 1285, 1316, 1798, 
etc. 

The Church (individually or collectively) which commences 
from faith, has no other regulator than the understanding; 
but the Church which commences from good, has for its regu- 
lator charity and the Lord. — A. C. 4672. 

The internal man in the course of regeneration receives 
truths before the external. — A. C. 3321. 

So far as celestial things which are of the internal man, have 
dominion, truths are multiplied ; but so far as worldly things 
which are of the external man, have dominion, truths are di- 
minished and vanish away. — A. C. 4099. 

Truth is the form of good, and -is formed in man according 
to the quality of his good. — A. C. 668, 

The multiplication of truth from good with those who are 



THE INNER WAY. 117 

in charity, is so immense as to be inexpressible. — A. C. 1941, 
1997. 

Genuine truths with man flow in from the Lord alone. — 
A. C. 8868. 

In the process of regeneration by truths, the Lord miracu- 
lously adapts apparent truths and even falsities to the reception 
of the good of charity. — A. C. 1832. 

If you will accept these great truths and many collateral ones 
from the same authority, and push them boldly to their logical 
issues, you will understand how the New Jerusalem is descend- 
ing, not only by the way of external doctrine and preaching 
which at present is an exceedingly insignificant factor, but also 
by an internal way, by the vivification of the remains of good 
and truth implanted in infancy in all men ; by the interior de- 
velopments of truth from the good of charity in the midst of 
exterior falsities ; and thus see how the Lord is universally 
descending from centres to circumferences, by means of a uni- 
versal church forming within, and pressing outward to destroy 
and rebuild, and to remodel all things after its heavenly pat- 
tern. You will then clearly understand the case of Mr. Very, 
and the thousand-fold more wonderful case of my friend G. 
W. C.,who, by interior openings, was initiated through percep- 
tions into the doctrines of the New Church and the spiritual 
sense of the Word without the aid of Swedenborg. You will 
understand my experiences and those of many others, which 
are now incredible or incomprehensible to you. You will ac- 
cept many things in the " End of the World " which you now 
reject, including Swedenborg' s doctrine of interior illumina- 
tion and multiplication of truths, whereby the internal sense 
of the Word is shown to be infinitely extensible and utterly 
inexhaustible. 



Il8 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

You object, on inadequate grounds as it seems to me, to 
my theories and speculations in the "End of the World." No 
matter how rational, logical, legitimate, instructive, suggest- 
ive, or interesting they may be, away with them, because they 
are presumptuous departures from the literal statements of 
Swedenborg ! You seem to have forgotten the orderly and 
rational extensions of thought and multiplication of truths 
from radical germs implanted in the mind. Swedenborg 
says that our perception of new truths increases with the ex- 
tension of our affection and thought into new societies of the 
heavens. 

Truths come into sight, as landscapes do, on motion of the 
observer. Our motion is the progressive evolution, the in- 
foldings and unfoldings, of the human spirit, individual and 
collective. "That the science of correspondences/ ' says 
Swedenborg, "by which the spiritual sense is given, is at this 
day revealed, is because now the divine truths of the church 
are coming into the light." — T. C. R. 207. The divine 
truths revealed through Swedenborg were, of organic neces- 
sity, the infinitesimal portions of the spiritual sense of the 
Word, which could be received into the organic structure of 
his mind imbedded, as it were, in the organic structure of his 
age. The New Church is not born into adult conditions. It 
has its beginning and infancy like all things : and its present 
powers of expression (even through a Swedenborg), of feeling 
and action, are all infantile, feeble, and inadequate, in com- 
parison with the things that are obliged to come upon us in the 
opening futures. This, a man can see from Swedenborg him- 
self, without perhaps being able to understand or appropriate 
the hundredth part of what Swedenborg has revealed. 

Swedenborg does nothing to cultivate the spirit of submis- 



THE INNER WAY. II9 

sion to authority. "Nunc licet' 1 is his motto. His final 
appeal is to human rationality. Every man's cry of "Thus 
saith the Lord" must be submitted to that, even his own. 
You want us to believe Swedenborg' s writings, not because 
they so clearly and wonderfully reveal the Lord to us, which 
is reason enough for believing them, but because the Lord 
has revealed them to him, and they come with a weight of 
authority that makes the use of our reason out of the ques- 
tion. This is the Roman Catholic position. It is the vice- 
gerency of the pope and the infallibility of the church in an- 
other shape ; and in your anxiety to plant yourselves upon 
authority, so that you may speak authoritatively (which the 
old proprium so loves to do), you give an undue weight to 
some expressions of Swedenborg on the subject. 

By making Swedenborg' s authority infallible and final, and 
by accepting a revelation of spiritual truth as in itself the 
coming of the Lord, you are in danger of closing the Word 
to yourselves. (A. C. 3793.) After that, you will certainly 
deny and reject every movement connected with the celestial 
life, which is the genuine life of the New Church. You will 
not understand that our spiritual truths are to be married to 
celestial goods, so as to inaugurate the celestial life upon earth. 
Let me entreat you, above all things, to study the celestial life. 

You say, in relation to my views of the new life, " the au- 
thor forecasts a ' holiness state/ the spontaneous regeneration 
without divine truth. He does not tell us where in the Doc- 
trines this is taught." The holiness state which I teach, is 
simply Swedenborg' s second stage of regeneration, which has 
been strangely overlooked, misunderstood, or ignored in the 
New Church. It is not "spontaneous regeneration without 
divine truth." Divine truth implanted in the external mind 



120 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

leads to good, constituting the first stage of regeneration. 
This good in its turn produces truths from the interior, which 
you reject in toto if they differ in the least from your exterior 
formulas. I make a few quotations from Swedenborg to illus- 
trate the genuine holiness state of the New Church. 

When good and truth are thus conjoined, man no longer 
looks from truths at what is to be believed and done, but 
from good, because he is imbued with truths and has them in 
himself: nor has he concern about truths from any other 
source than he can see from his own good ; and he sees con- 
tinually more and more, for they are produced from good like 
offspring from their parents. — A. C. 8772. 

Man is not in the heavenly life, nor in the Lord, until he 
enters into this second state. — A. C. 9832. 

In the good of love which flows in from the Lord through 
the angels, there is all truth which would manifest itself of 
itself if man lived in genuine love to the Lord and the neigh- 
bor. — A. C. 6323. 

The natural man is to be subdued, and all his concupis- 
cences extirpated, together with those things that concern 
them. — A. C. 5647. 

The natural man should become altogether as nothing, that 
is, without will, in order that a man may become spiritual. — 
A. C. 565. 

The former life which is of hell, must be altogether de- 
stroyed : that is, evils and falsities must be removed, in order 
that new life, which is the life of heaven, may be implanted. 
—A. C. 9336. 

The regenerate man is reduced to such a state that the ex- 
ternal man does obeisance to the internal, which it never can 
do until it is quiescent, and as it were annihilated, — A. C. 
933- 



THE INNER WAY. 121 

The Lord removes the proprium of man, and gives from 
his own proprium in which He dwells with man. — A. E. 
254. 

The internal man is the celestial proprium given by the 
Lord, and is therefore spoken of as man's own, but it is the 
Lord's; yea, it is the Lord in man. — A. C. 1594, 1940, '99. 

Heavenly peace flows in when the lusts arising from the 

love of self and the world are taken away. No one can be 

gifted with this peace, but he who is led of the Lord and is 
in the Lord. — A. C. 5662. 

These teachings of Swedenborg indicate a " holiness state," 
as you call it, different from but far transcending in perfec- 
tion and beauty anything ever taught or realized by the 
Quietists, or Quakers, or Methodists, or anything yet exhibited 
in the teachings or life of the so-called New Church up to 
this time. 

You object to my expression, "the Commune of Christ/ ' 
profaning my idea with the political insanities of communism 
and socialism. The Commune of Christ is the communion of 
saints, their common life in the body of Christ. It is the law 
and order of heaven, where all are wrought into the most har- 
monious and loving associations. It is the law of the new 
church in the heavens, now forming within us to descend upon 
the earth. "Thy will be done on earth as it is in the heav- 
ens," is not only a petition to be offered, but a prophecy to be 
fulfilled. Soon may it be ! 

Yours fraternally, 

W. H. H. 
11 



LETTER XII. 

THE INTERNAL AND THE EXTERNAL WAY. 

DEAR FRIEND : — Swedenborg reiterates over and over 
that there are two ways by which knowledge is obtained 
by the human mind, an internal way through individual 
perceptions of truth from good, and an external way by 
revelation through others. He also often affirms that the 
regenerating man is in the internal sense of the Word 'according 
to the degree of his regeneration, and that the opening of the 
interior degrees of life would bring him into conscious posses- 
sion of those knowledges without any previous instruction from 
external sources. How can any serious reader of Swedenborg 
be ignorant of these general truths? 

There are two or three striking passages from Swedenborg, 
which I have not before quoted, and which may interest the 
readers of your magazine. 

"The man who is regenerating and becoming spiritual, is 
first led by truth to good ; for he does not know what spiritual, 
or which is the same, what christian good is, except by truth 
or by means of doctrine derived from the Word. Thus he is 
initiated into good." 

"Afterwards, when he is initiated, he is no longer led by 
truth to good, but by good to truth ; for he then from good 
not only sees the truths which he had before known, but also 
from good produces new truths which before he had not known, 
nor could know" — A. C. 5804. 

This is very clearly stated, and one cannot escape from it 

122 



THE INTERNAL AND THE EXTERNAL WAY. 1 23 

by saying that all these new truths from interior sources belong 
to the celestial church away before the flood, and are not to 
be expected in men of the present age, in whom the will- 
principle is totally destroyed, and who can only learn by the 
external way. Swedenborg is not here speaking of the Most 
Ancient Church, but of the natural man being made spiritual, 
and he enunciates a universal law of regeneration when he 
affirms that in its first stage we learn from external sources, 
and in its second stage we have new truths, such as we could 
not acquire by the first process, given to us by the Lord from 
within. And although the first will-principle of the race was 
nearly extinguished at the flood, the Lord gives us through 
the intellectual principle a new will which has the same 
faculty of weaving new truths out of its own substance. 

" It is a very different thing to know what is good and true 
by perception, and to learn what is good and true by doctrine. 
Those who know by perception have no need of the knowledge 
acquired in the way of systematized doctrines. . . . To such as 
are principled in perceptive knowledge, it is given from the 
Lord to know what is good and true by an i?iternal way : but 
to such as are taught by doctrine, knowledge is given by an 
external way, or that of the bodily senses: and the difference 
of knowledge in these two cases is like the difference between 
light and darkness.'' — A. C. 521. 

Swedenborg is here speaking of the celestial man of the 
Most Ancient Church, of whom he says elsewhere, there are 
some remains even in our modern life — people, like my friend 
G. W. C, who see truth from good without learning it from 
books or pulpits, and who are supposed by those who do not 
understand them to be the victims of "enthusiastic spirits.' ' 
He also says in this same passage, that the truths given to men 



124 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

by the interior way were preserved by the Lord for the use 
of their posterity, and became the external doctrines of the 
degenerate churches which succeeded. 

"The men of the celestial church are such that they per- 
ceive all the goods and truths of heaven from the Lord by influx 
into their interiors : whence they see goods and truths inwardly 
in themselves, as implanted, and have no need to learn them 
by a posterior way, or to treasure them up in their memory." 
—A. E. 739. 

Now these "new truths" which so transcend the truths 
acquired by the external way, are not the rewards of learn- 
ing and study, or of any scientific or rational processes of 
thought. They are not the products of self-derived intelli- 
gence, or of a large, cultured brain applied to abstruse sub- 
jects. Far from it. They come only to those whom Madam 
Guyon calls "annihilated souls." They belong to those who 
have passed through "great tribulation;" who have fought 
with "wild beasts," and been familiar with sorrows, humilia- 
tions, and despairs ; who have trod the way of the cross, and 
have died to the selfhood and the world ; and whose real 
nature is as invisible to their fellow-men, as the resurrected 
body of our Lord was to the Jews. The humble, the obscure, 
the ignorant, the miserable, the prodigals, the Magdalens, 
the self-rejected, will seek and find this divine illumination 
from within, far in advance of those who, enamored of them- 
selves, their opinions, and their positions, exclude in a great 
measure that Omniscient Presence which alone is the Light 
of the World. 

The opposition to the truths of regeneration as enunciated 
by Swedenborg, is not altogether due to the antagonism of 
the natural against the spiritual man, and that eternal warfare 



THE INTERNAL AND THE EXTERNAL WAY. 1 25 

of the flesh against the spirit. It comes from men who are 
earnestly trying, I have no doubt, to keep the command- 
ments, to perform heavenly uses, and to know and love the 
Lord in his second coming. Their opposition springs from 
the fear of the old ecclesiastical proprium, that its life is in 
danger, that its activities in which it takes such supreme de- 
light may be taken away from it. People may outgrow the 
external church and all its sacraments and usages, or wear 
them indifferently as loose garments to be thrown aside and 
changed at pleasure ! What ! the Lord coming down to men 
individually, so that they will not need our guidance and in- 
struction, and the grand paraphernalia of the external church 
be of little or no use but to children and to natural men not 
yet made spiritual ! Away with such an idea ! Our craft is 
in danger. " Great is Diana of the Ephesians ! M 

This ecclesiastical spirit is not peculiar to the clergy. The 
idolatry of the Church as an external institution, has long kept 
the light of heaven out of the minds of the laity. May all 
these dead things with their imaginary sanctities and fictitious 
values soon pass away, and make room for the descent of the 
Holy City from God out of heaven ! 

Yours fraternally, 

W. H. H. 
11* 



LETTER XIII. 

THE SEED GROWING: THE PROPRIUM AND THE 
NEW LIFE. 

MY DEAR FRIEND :— Your letter gave me great pleas- 
ure, for I now perceive that the little seed I have been 
continuously sowing in your mind for two or three years 
is beginning to grow, and will bring forth fruit, perhaps a 
hundred- fold. 

When I last conversed with you, you were a genuine church- 
woman, belonging to what I call, with no disrespect, the Epis- 
copalian clique of New-Church people. Harris was your bete 
noir. G. W. C. was the victim of enthusiastic spirits. I was 
strongly suspected. You would not subscribe to the Inde- 
pendent. You believed in church institutions, in a graded 
ministry, constituted authority, a beautiful liturgy, a calm 
and happy life according to the commandments, a choir with 
classic music, and in stained-glass windows. With all these, 
how could the heavenly doctrines fail to achieve the conquest 
of the world ? 

Well, I quietly mailed you, month after month, advance 
sheets of the Letters on Spiritual Subjects. The seed is grow- 
ing. You now write me, that although you still think some 
of G. W. C.'s experiences are " fantastic," you are deeply in- 
debted to us for a knowledge of the proprium which you never 
could have obtained from any other New- Church sources ; 
and that our teachings have enabled you to realize the delu- 
sive subtleties and hidden depths of your own heart as you 

126 



THE SEED GROWING. \2>] 

never did before. In consequence of this new light in your 
soul, you have entered upon a new state, you say, " a state 
of combat and of unrest," a state of torpor and indifference 
to spiritual things, in which your perceptions of truth are 
sadly obscured. 

This state, my dear friend, however disagreeable and even 
melancholy it may be for a time, is a most hopeful and salu- 
tary state. It is merely the valley of the shadow of death, 
through which we must all pass on the way from the old to 
the new life. There must be a breaking up of old states of 
affection and thought, before we can leave the dead to bury 
their dead, and follow the Lord alone. There is no state of 
mind which seems to me so sad and hopeless, as that of very 
many excellent New- Church people who are satisfied with 
their spiritual condition, because they keep the command- 
ments and are assiduous in the discharge of all their known 
duties. This is a purely Jewish or natural state of the relig- 
ious life, which may exist in great perfection without a ray of 
spiritual enlightenment, or of influx from the celestial heavens. 
It is a fig-tree state, without a particle of the vine or the olive 
in it. It is the mere beginning, not the finality, of the New- # 
Church life in the soul. When it is a fixed condition, and 
the party neither believes in nor desires any higher or more 
interior life upon earth, the mind and heart are permanently 
closed, and the "all things new" of the New Church are 
nothing but the things of the old dispensations repaired and 
varnished. 

G. W. C. was looking the other day at a photograph of an 
exceedingly talented and distinguished minister. It was a 
calm, noble, peaceful, luminous countenance. "Behold," 
he said, "a splendid type of a civilization which is destined 



128 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

to become extinct. This is the old proprium exquisitely 
cultivated and refined, and thoroughly subjugated and accom- 
modated to the uses and proprieties of civilized life. But not 
one particle of this flesh and blood, (the old proprium,) shall 
inherit the kingdom of heaven. This man's life will be razed 
down to its very roots, and all begin over again. Nothing 
but the new proprium goes to heaven, for heaven is the Lord ; 
and the new proprium is not the old proprium glorified, but 
it is the Lord Himself manifested in the life. 11 

O, that the New Church would hear and comprehend the 
meaning of these words, and thus realize the supreme fact, that 
the Second Coming of the Lord is the genuine, organic mani- 
festation of the life of Jesus Christ in the souls of his people ! 
It is because this truth is brooding, like the Spirit of God, 
over the waters of the abyss in your own soul, that you are in 
"states of combat and unrest." The old principles which 
are satisfied with a good moral life, and some aesthetic im- 
provements in the old order of things, are dissatisfied and 
unhappy at the approach of such radical and revolutionary 
ideas. What ! give up all we have — actually all, and be nothing 
and have nothing — to follow Christ ! To become as little 
children ; to cease from man, "whose breath is in his nostrils"; 
to forget authorities and formulas ; to leave churches, institu- 
tions, and all human help behind ; to stand in the wilderness 
alone with the wild beasts ; to realize the hell within us and 
around us, and our own utter helplessness ; to hear the voice 
of the Lord, whispering in our inmost being, "Behold, I stand 
at the door and knock"; to open that mystic door of the 
human will in a spirit of utter humility and self-abandonment; 
and to feel the Divine breath moving from the centre of our 
subdued affections down through all our thoughts, down into 



THE SEED GROWING. I2g 

the minutest ultimate activities of our sphere, subduing, re- 
arranging, restoring all things a hundred-fold ! — ah, my friend, 
that is the New Life. 

In Him alone shall we find that life, who said and is forever 
saying unto us: "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. 11 

Yours truly, 

W. H. H. 



M' 



LETTER XIV. 

THE TERRORS OF THE NEW LIFE: SPIRITUAL 
TEMPTATIONS. 

Y DEAR FRIEND : — Have you never felt surprised at 
Swedenborg's statements, that there are temptations of 
three different discrete degrees, natural, spiritual, and 
celestial (A. C. 847)? that none can be tempted but those 
who are in celestial and spiritual good (A. C. 4 2 99) ? tnat our 
Lord's temptations by the angels were the deepest and hard- 
est of all (A. C. 4295)? and that few in our times ever un- 
dergo anything like spiritual temptation, or even know what 
it is or what are its uses (A. C. 8965) ? 

It always seems to us that what we call our temptations are 
assaults upon our spiritual life. Is it possible that all the good 
people in Swedenborg's own day, the Catholic devotees, the 
Methodists, the Quietists, the Moravians, the Quakers, and 
others, who strenuously and painfully resisted the world, the 
flesh, and the devil, and kept the commandments amid great 
mental and bodily self-surrenders and tribulations— -is it possi- 
ble that these good souls were disturbed only by what Swe- 
denborg calls natural anxieties, and knew nothing of the 
genuine struggle between good and evil, the result of which 
determines our final destiny? However that may be, one 
thing is certain, Swedenborg has taught some strange and 
deep things about temptation, never before known to the 
Christian world, and the most wonderful of which have per- 
haps never before been recognized or realized by his own 

130 



SPIRITUAL TEMPTATIONS. I3I 

most zealous and studious disciples. I have been indebted 
for my very imperfect knowledge of them, to the remarkable 
perceptions and experiences of my friend, G. W. C. You 
will first be very much astonished at what I am going to say ; 
but you will very soon acknowledge it all as genuine truth. 

G. W. C. was lately examining the photograph of a fine- 
looking, talented, and in every way excellent young New 
Churchman. He was one of those who had enjoyed the best 
ecclesiastical culture, and had kept the commandments from 
his youth up. He was bright, joyous, and sweet-tempered, 
loving everybody and deserving to be loved by all. He was 
full of worldly desires and ambitions, but they were all regu- 
lated by the strictest principles of honor, propriety, and jus- 
tice. He was in fact a model young man, to whom parents, 
teachers, and pastors might point with pride and pleasure, as 
the perfect fruit of the best doctrinal and moral training. All 
this G. W. C. recognized in his psychometrical analysis ; and 
then added, "but he has never had his interior hells opened 
in the least, and he has no knowledge whatever of the pro- 
prium, nor the faintest conception of the new life. ' ' 

Now this young man had no doubt often resisted the infes- 
tations of evil spirits persuading him to break the command- 
ments of God, and perhaps had often praised the Lord for 
protecting him in what he regarded as great and terrible 
temptations. And yet he has not the slightest idea of the 
meaning of spiritual temptations — from which he has been 
mercifully withheld, because his religious development has 
not advanced a step beyond the best models of Old-church or 
even of Jewish culture. He is the young man whom Jesus 
looked upon and loved on account of his orderly and beauti- 
ful external life. But he has no desire to be " perfect' ' in 



132 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

the sense in which Jesus used that word. He would be " ex- 
ceedingly sorrowful" if he were required to give up his 
" great possessions " — to lay down the life of the proprium, 
and to follow the Lord alone through all the terrors and suf- 
ferings of regeneration. 

It is perhaps necessary for the present stability and progress 
of society, that this man, and many like him, should be held 
in the external and useful activities of the suppressed proprium. 
But he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, until, either here 
or in the world of spirits, he has put off all the external states 
of affection and thought which have engendered his present 
character and status ; until he has been vastated of all his ap- 
parent goods and truths, and by infestations and genuine spirit- 
ual temptations has been brought in the inmost sphere of his 
affections to that duel to the death between good and evil, 
which terminates in the triumph of one or the other. 

Now, my dear friend, in my opinion, you are as much like 
this estimable young gentleman as a woman can ever be said 
to be like a man. But your last letter assures me that you are 
advancing toward interior states, which would probably be 
premature and disastrous to him. I will quote a few paragraphs 
from that letter, which called forth an extraordinary declara- 
tion from G. W. C. 

" I do fully see that there is nothing good, or true, or living 
in myself, and that all of life, or goodness, or truth is in the 
Lord. It is true, as you suggest, that this may be merely an 
intellectual apprehension, and not from the will. Yet it does 
not seem that despair would arise from any further revelation 
of my helplessness, for I know it is utter, and I look for no 
strength — nor of any evil, for I know as Swedenborg says ' from 
living experience ' that there is no good in this selfhood of 
mine. I have had illusion after illusion destroyed by the bit- 



SPIRITUAL TEMPTATIONS. 1 33 

terest suffering, until I know that even what seems noblest is 
a subtile form of self-love. 

"I perceive plainly the immense power that the desire of 
being well thought of, the love of praise and fear of disap- 
proval, have had over me ; and these motives are still perhaps 
as strong ; but I am not now blind to their worthlessness, or 
to the infinite distance between ' a living soul ' and a character 
which inwardly is self-love and outwardly respectable. 

" Instead of criticising your last letter, I would rather ask 
a question. How can one overcome or rather be freed from 
what Swedenborg calls c infestations ' — moods of darkness, evil 
desires, false thoughts, hideous fantasies, profane suggestions, 
which you do not feel tempted by, for you utterly abhor them, 
and yet you are to a degree overpowered by their oppression 
and presence ? 

"I do not feel that they could destroy the life of my soul, 
for that is solely from the Lord, and cannot be even assailed 
by them ; but such states are very painful. ' ' 

Alas ! my dear friend, the states which next await you will 
be far more painful and even intolerable. G. W. C, on read- 
ing the above extracts from your letter, said to this effect : 
" She is still merely in external temptations. All these things 
— evil desires, profane suggestions, hideous fantasies, etc., are 
still objective to her, things outside of her, with which she 
thinks she has no vital connection, and which she seemingly 
resists, condemns, and abhors. But as her external states re- 
cede and she comes consciously into her own internal life, the 
case will be reversed. She will feel the evil desires, profane 
suggestions, false thoughts, etc., etc., as subjective things, 
something inside of her, yea, her very self — her very life and 
love, to which she clings with the tenacity of self-preservation, 
and feels that she would utterly perish without them." 

12 



134 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

When a man is in this state, he is taken possession of by evil 
spirits who are used by the Lord to reveal to him the hells that 
are within him. But he feels the hell to be his own life. He 
is alive and boiling over with all infernal passions and desires. 
Truth has apparently no power : he takes no interest in it : he 
may even deny it utterly. The Lord is far off — indeed, to all 
appearance, totally absent ; and he has no feeling toward Him 
but disgust or hatred. Conscience seems extinguished ; prayer 
is useless ; and there is no trace of spiritual life about him, 
but a vague feeling that somehow or other it is necessary to 
keep the commandments. It is a wonder to him that he does 
not rush headlong into the commission of all sorts of evils ; 
and yet he is restrained, for the Lord is then incredibly near 
him. None are admitted into these tribulations but those who 
have interior states of celestial and spiritual good, which are 
brought forth into view and ultimated only by this terrible 
struggle between the old and the new proprium, a last struggle 
not only for dominion but for life. Nor is a man released 
from these struggles until he thoroughly distrusts and abhors 
himself, and utterly despairs of salvation. In no other way, 
Swedenborg repeatedly declares, can the will-principle of the 
old proprium be thoroughly broken, and man reduced into 
those states of genuine humiliation, which are necessary to the 
new birth. Madam Guyon preceded Swedenborg in his knowl- 
edge of these things. 

This state of vastation and temptation is meant by our Lord, 
when He says : ' i Can the children of the bridechamber mourn 
so long as the bridegroom is with them ? But the days will come 
when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall 
they fast" — Matt. ix. 15. And the uses of this state are 
implied in the spiritual sense of the next two verses, which 



SPIRITUAL TEMPTATIONS. 135 

seem to have no connection in the letter with what has pre- 
ceded. The use is, to enable us to divest ourselves utterly of 
our old garments, and to throw away the old bottles, so that 
we may receive new garments and new bottles for the entirely 
new wine of the spiritual life. 

Now, my dear friend, all this is made clear by Swedenborg. 
You have, no doubt, read hundreds of passages in his writings 
which would have prepared you for their comprehension ; but 
they made no permanent impression upon your mind. If you 
would know how feeble are the greatest temptations of the 
man of the Old Church in comparison with those that await 
the man of the New Church, study the following paragraphs : 

" The nature of temptation is known to few, if any, because 
so few in the present day undergo temptations ; and those that 
do so, know no other than that there is something inherent in 
themselves that suffers. On such occasions wicked spirits ex- 
cite the remembrance of all the falsities and evils which a man 
has thought or done from infancy, and this in an indescribably 
cunning and malicious manner. The angels, however, who 
are attendant upon man, bring forth his goods and truths and 
thereby defend him \ but opposition being felt and recognized 
by man, occasions remorse and the pangs of conscience. 

"Temptation is of two kinds, one as to the understanding, 
and the other as to the will. When man is tempted as to the 
things of the understanding, then wicked spirits excite the 
evil actions of which he has been guilty, here signified by the 
'unclean beasts/ and thus accuse and condemn him; and at 
the same time they call forth his good actions, represented by 
'clean beasts,' which they pervert by a thousand devices ; and 
also whatever has been the subject of his thoughts, denoted by 
the ' fowl f ; and all that is here typified by 'every thing which 
creepeth upon the ground.' 

"This temptation is slight, and is perceived only by the 



I36 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

recollection of these things and by a certain anxiety thence 
proceeding — [all this, we may interpolate, being familiar to 
the spiritual experiences of the old church] \ but when man is 
tempted as to the things of the will, then what he has done 
and thought is not so much excited, but evil genii (for by that 
name may evil spirits of this kind be called) infla?ne him with 
such of their own desires and filthy lusts as he is tainted with, 
and thus carry on the combat by man's own cupidity. This 
they effect in so malicious and clandestine a manner, that it 
is impossible to suppose them its agents ; for they infuse them- 
selves into the life of his impure affections, and in the same in- 
stant turn and bend the affection for good and truth into the 
love of evil and the false, so that man cannot possibly know 
but that it is done of himself , and thus flows in of its own ac- 
cord. This temptation, of which more will be said hereafter, 
is most grievous, and is perceived as internal agony and tor- 
menting fire. Multiplied experience [mark this !] has assured 
me of the correctness of this description, and has also in- 
formed me of the period when this influx or inundation from 
the evil spirits or genii takes place, as well as of its origin, 
nature, or mode of operation. " — A. C. 751. 

These interior temptations, in which a man is made sub- 
jectively conscious of the hell of the proprium, can only come 
to him after he has been baptized into the truth and had the 
heavens opened to him; after he has felt the influx of the dove 
of peace and heard the divine voice of approval within him. 
These are preparations for the great combat which is impend- 
ing. For after these things had happened to our Lord, it is 
added: "And immediately the spirit drive th him into the 
wilderness, and he was there in the wilderness forty days, 
tempted of Satan ; and he was with the wild beasts. ' ' And 
it is only by a study of the Psalms from the standpoint of a 
knowledge of spiritual temptations, that we can get any clear 



SPIRITUAL TEMPTATIONS, 1 37 

conception of the stupendous meanings involved in the wail- 
ings, humiliations, agonies, and despairs, which characterize 
those mystical utterances of the Lord. 

The temptations of the man of the Old Church, and our own 
so far as we are still only in the life of that church (as almost 
all of us are), are purely objective ; and their uses are, to dis- 
sipate the sensuous blindness of the natural man, to make us 
know our wretched and lost condition, to distinguish between 
good and evil, between the false and the true, and to induce 
us to compel ourselves to a life of obedience from the love of 
truth. It is a fight against forces and persons outside of our- 
selves, and our resistance and conquest has a tendency to be- 
get the pride of self-merit and the complacency of self-right- 
eousness, notwithstanding all intellectual disclaimers to the 
contrary. It is a case of suppressed proprium. It is the gov- 
ernment of truth, not of love; a life regulated by the cogni- 
tions of the intellect, and not by the spontaneous evolutions 
of a heavenly will. 

This spontaneous evolution of a heavenly will — the true 
life awaiting the New Church — can only be attained by the to- 
tal subjugation and separation of the old will-principle from 
the man. It is a purely subjective work — requiring no eccle- 
siastical machinery, but is effected immediately by the Lord 
alone. The man is made conscious of the hell in which he 
lives, of the hell which he is, not by mere cognitions of 
truths, but by actual, organic perceptions of states. He suf- 
fers the spheres of evil spirits and the pains of hell, until he 
abhors and loathes himself, and sinks into absolute humilia- 
tion and despair. When the contest is over, and the old 
selfhood is separated and the new proprium is born, the man 
is entirely a new creature, something entirely different from 



I38 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

his old self. He is "meek and lowly of heart/' appropriat- 
ing neither good nor evil to himself, having no will not coin- 
cident with the Lord's will, taking no thought for the morrow, 
and desiring no life but that into which the Lord shall lead 
him. 

This man is now capable of manifesting in his life the traits 
which Swedenborg says are characteristic of the heavenly na- 
ture. 

"In heaven they are the greatest who are the least: they 
are the wisest who believe and perceive themselves to be least 
wise : they are the happiest who desire others to be most 
happy, and themselves least so. Heaven consists in desiring 
to be beneath all, as hell consists in desiring to be above all : 
consequently, in the glory of heaven there is nothing at all of 
the glory of this world." — A. C. 2654. 

When this "tabernacle of God" — this New Church celes- 
tial, is erected in the midst of the temple in the holy city, 
and fully established upon earth, it will be a fixed gateway be- 
tween the Divine and nature. Then our Lord descending 
through the new proprium, and working from centres to cir- 
cumferences, will effect changes in the earths, the heavens, 
and the hells, of which we have hitherto had scarcely the 
faintest conception. 

For this final and universal coming of the Lord, let us all 

pray, "Even so come, Lord Jesus." 

Yours truly, 

W. H. H. 



M' 



LETTER XV. 

THE CELESTIAL MAN AGAIN. 

Y DEAR SIR: — Your letter gives me great pleasure. 
You are young in the New Church, and yet you appre- 
ciate and enjoy enunciations upon spiritual subjects 
which are considered by many as strong meat for men and 
not milk for babes. The reason is, that you are in states of 
more or less clear perception of truth. I have met, to my as- 
tonishment, people who have never known anything about 
Swedenborg, who can see and believe the truths I have pre- 
sented more readily than many of those who have been long 
versed in the doctrines of the Church. And of professed 
Newchurchmen, " not many wise men after the flesh, not 
many mighty, not many noble/ ' have accepted these things, 
but the obscure, the lowly, the penitent, the babes and suck- 
lings, the women who "keep silence with all subjection/' 
etc. ; all of which proves that they are truths of the Lord's 
celestial kingdom. 

You ask me whether the celestial man will resist imposi- 
tions, go to law, defend "his rights of person and property, 
etc. So far as a man is in natural, rational, or spiritual 
states, he does these things, working of himself, or as of him- 
self, from standpoints of interest, reason, duty, and conscience. 
He is permitted to do so, he is justified in doing so, by the 
laws of moral and civil right and justice. But the celestial 
man has passed through these states and "remembers them 
no more." He does not act from a sense of right, justice, 

139 



I40 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

and reason, or from duty and conscience, but from the stand- 
points of love alone. He has ceased to resist and to combat. 
The Lord's life is so organically established in him, that he 
lives exactly as the Lord would live, if He were re-incarnated 
in his body and under his conditions. He may withdraw 
himself, he may conceal himself, he may answer them noth- 
ing ; but he will endure all things, forgive all things ; and he 
will never, never act from a regard to his own rights and in- 
terests, but always with a view of doing the utmost good to 
the neighbor. 

Some might suppose that such a character is impossible 
under the conditions of this world, and that he would be 
trodden under foot of men. This is not so. The very na- 
ture of this celestial man has a tendency to preserve him from 
the enmity and the infestations of his fellows. He always 
gives the soft answer that turneth away wrath. He never 
makes himself obnoxious by his pretensions. He infringes 
upon no one's rights, he hurts no one's feelings, he stands in 
no one's way. His sweet, gentle, unobtrusive sphere calls 
forth the remains of good and truth in all who come into 
contact with him. The hells interiorly flee at his coming, 
and he stands amid the evil forms of society like a child 
among wicked men, who instinctively soften their words and 
restrain their conduct in his presence. 

Moreover the man who has spared himself no sacrifice or 
suffering in getting rid of the old proprium, finds himself 
walking more and more securely within the personal, protec- 
tive atmospheres of the Lord. After all said and done by 
infidels, agnostics, and lukewarm Christians, the Lord does 
govern this world by his special providences down to the 
minutest particulars of every man's life. The celestial man 



THE CELESTIAL MAN AGAIN. I4I 

believes this, knows it, feels it, and acts accordingly. He 
fears no evil, he takes no thought for the morrow. He says 
always to himself, "Except the Lord build the house, they 
labor in vain that build it." And the consequence is, that 
he is continually under the direct leading of the Lord, mov- 
ing in the current of spontaneous obedience to divine law, 
his ways being protected by invisible cherubim, and made 
smooth and happy by unobserved and unrecorded miracles. 

"Because thou hast made the Lord, my refuge, the most 
High, thy habitation : 

".There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague 
come nigh thy dwelling ; 

" For He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee 
in all thy ways. 

" They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy 
foot against a stone. 

" Thou shall tread upon the lion and the adder ; the young 
lion a?id the dragon shall thou trample under feet. 

"Because he hath set his love upon 7?ie, therefore will 1 de- 
liver him : I will set hi?n on high, because he hath known my 
name." — Psalms xci. 9-14. 

It is entirely useless to lay down rules for the government 
of the celestial man. He is a law unto himself, because the 
law of the Lord is written upon his heart, and he knows of 
the doctrine because he does the will of his Maker. Nor can 
natural and spiritual men become celestial men by compelling 
themselves to obey the laws of the celestial life. This was 
the supreme mistake of the Quakers. A man should not 
strive to be anything, or to attain to any particular degree. 
The ambition to be good must give way to the simple and 
earnest desire to be the Lord's. He alone knows our organic 
forms, our uses, our destinies. Let us shun all evils as sins 



142 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

against Him. Let us do whatever our hands may find to do, 
as the exact thing provided and sent by Him for us to do. 
Then whatever organic openings of the interior may take 
place in us, will be made in an orderly and heavenly manner 
by the Lord alone ; and He will introduce us into the degree 
and states of life, in which we can render the greatest service 
to the neighbor. 

Yours truly, 

W. H. H. 



LETTER XVI. 

THE DESCENT OF THE LORD THROUGH THE CONJUGIAL 
SPHERE. 



M' 



Y DEAR FRIEND:— I am glad that you have been so 
deeply impressed with our views of the organic nature 
of the Second Coming of the Lord. Spiritual illumi- 
nation through Swedenborg is but one element of his coming. 
Divine Truth is substance and form, and in this new age it 
brings the personal atmospheres of the Divine Man. The Lord 
is entering the Body of Humanity by the opening of all the 
discrete degrees of the mind ; and He comes to abide, and to 
reduce the natural plane into perfect correspondence with the 
heavens. 

Our Lord descended and manifested Himself to men in 
ancient times through the persons of angels infilled with his 
glory. He descended and took representative but organic foot- 
hold in the world through the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, 
and Joseph, a wonderful manifestation but little studied or com- 
prehended by the church. He descended representatively 
through the ritual, laws, and history of the Jewish people. He 
gave those ultimates fixity and perpetuity in the literal sense 
of the written Word. He descended into the physical and 
atomic ultimates of nature and the natural plane of the human 
mind, by assuming the external form and limitations of hu- 
manity. By opening the spiritual degree of the mind of Swe- 
denborg, He has descended as the spiritual sense of the Word, 
or the Divine Truth. His last and perfect manifestation, the 



144 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

crown of all the rest, will be as the Divine Love. It will be 
effected by the continuous opening of the celestial degree, and 
He will come as the Bridegroom, entering into the conjugial 
principle, and planting Himself in the married things of the 
mind, and thence operating to bring all essences and forms, 
all persons and things into those marriage relations, which will 
constitute the life of the New Church, and the sabbath of the 
world. 

What stupendous processes, what amazing phenomena, what 
organic and radical revolutions, are involved in this Divine 
movement from primates to ultimates ! By how many names 
will it be called, how many totally different appearances will 
it put on, how many mistakes will be made, what errors, fan- 
tasies, imperfect developments, and false claims will arise, what 
domestic and social and national commotions, etc., etc. ! All 
this will be in accordance with organic law, because the divine 
influx must enter into the existing forms of the human mind, 
and its manifestations must be according to the states and re- 
ceptivities of the forms into which it flows. 

The greatest, profoundest, and most radical revolutions will 
of course occur in the relations between man and woman. 
A friend once sneeringly said to me, that there was always a 
woman at the bottom of all the spiritualism in the New 
Church. How could it be otherwise ? Every man is in real- 
ity a woman-man and every woman is a man-woman ; and our 
search for our spiritual counterparts is only the spontaneous, 
inevitable, irrepressible effort of our souls to understand them- 
selves, or to realize our own being. Our reaching out after 
that perfect ideal marriage which is synonymous with love, 
peace, joy, heaven, is caused by the divine movement or 



DESCENT THROUGH THE CONJUGIAL SPHERE. 1 45 

conatus that flows forth for the creation and sustentation of 
the life, order, beauty, and glory of the universe. 

The heavenly marriage, which is heaven in us, is from the 
divine good that is in the Lord and the divine truth which is 
from Him. Thence proceed first of all conjugial love and 
the love of children ; and he who is in conjugial love is in all 
the other loves, and in all the delights and uses of heaven. 
Therefore the organic pathway of the Lord, in his descent 
from primates to ultimates, must be through the conjugial 
principle in whatever forms it has been planted in the human 
mind. Given a single conjugial pair on earth, who are truly 
regenerate and in the heavenly marriage, whose propriums 
have not been merely suppressed and concealed, but actually 
subjugated and removed, who are in the new life and in a 
state of conjugial unition or unitized sex ; and the Lord has 
found an open door by which He can enter, and a fulcrum or 
centre from which He can operate on every human being in 
the world, and even upon the atomic elements of nature. A 
few hundred such organic bases would aid more powerfully in 
the descent of the New Jerusalem out of heaven, than all the 
churches in Christendom, even though they preached Sweden- 
borg from every pulpit. 

What special phenomena will be produced by the descent 
of the Lord into the conjugial principle, can only be surmised 
from general truths and their bearings. The phenomena 
must be unfolded or evolved, a process of which we only see 
the faint beginnings, before they can be studied or rationally 
comprehended. We know that the phenomena will be infi- 
nitely varied, and that they will be of two great classes, the 
good and the evil; for the Lord's life received and appropri- 
ated according to his divine will, makes all the phenomena 
13 K 



I46 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

of heaven ; and his life received and perverted to selfish ends, 
makes all the phenomena of hell. And so will it be when, by 
the opening of the interiors, the heavens and hells within us 
are unfolded upon the earth. 

There will be a gradual but ever-increasing development of 
the regenerate life in the church, a marriage of the spiritual 
truths of the Word already revealed to us, and the celestial 
goods which are now descending from heaven. More and 
more conjugial marriages will take place, and the conjugial 
love will become more and more potent in the practical af- 
fairs of life. Man and woman will live together and work 
together more and more as one person. 

The love and care of children will grow more and more 
ardent and delightful ; and as a consequence all domestic and 
social virtues will increase, and the life of man be more and 
more dominated by the love of use, and brightened with the 
wisdom and sweetened with the charities of heaven. There 
will be openings of the interior senses, temptations and 
vastations such as have never been experienced before, con- 
sciousness of conjugial unition, beginnings of internal respira- 
tion, great illuminations of the rational principle, states of 
perception whence come heavenly wisdom and peace, and 
various communications with spirits and angels, not as ends 
or things to be desired of themselves, but as inevitable, or- 
ganic accompaniments and preparations attending those tre- 
mendous radical changes of state which will be induced in the 
most gradual and orderly manner upon the whole human 
race. 

On the other hand, and by the operation of the same laws 
upon the evil, there will be a fearful increase of sensuality in 
all its forms, a growth of adulterous and bestial passion, de- 



DESCENT THROUGH THE CONJUGIAL SPHERE, 1 47 

struction of unborn children, neglect of marital and parental 
duties, and diabolical efforts made for the freedom of divorce, 
the abolition of marriage, and the destruction of all religion. 
This class also will have its spiritual manifestations, its play 
of sexual affinities simulating conjugial love, its assumptions, 
assertions, and aggressions, and its organized fantasies which 
it will call philosophic wisdom, all tending however to the 
deification of self and nature. 

There would be chaos upon earth if this opening of the in- 
teriors were to occur suddenly and extensively throughout the 
race. For the proprium of the natural man is born into and 
lives in the hells of adultery, drunkenness, and gambling, 
with all their attendant fantasies and insanities. Our closed 
conditions simply conceal our real natures from ourselves and 
others. The angels have the same essential nature in them- 
selves, but they live consciously in the new proprium, the 
new life derived from the Lord, which perpetually withholds 
them, with their own consent, from their inherent life. Such 
will be the case with regenerate men on earth in the coming 
New Church. Such, however, are the dangers and difficulties 
of the opening, that it will be effected at first by a little here 
and a little there, and by innumerable preparations, warnings, 
and instructions, to prevent delusions, self-exaltations, and 
profanations. 

What is the cause of this terrible danger in having our 
spiritual senses and perceptions opened ? It lies in the fact 
that our whole interior life is cast in the mold of all the accu- 
mulated evils and falsities of past generations. The proprium 
enters into everything and bends it to its own gratification 
and advantage. It wants to be fed constantly on sugar-plums, 
and resists everything which exposes its character and threat- 



I48 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

ens its subjugation as the consummation of the evil and the 
false. Actuated by proprium and deceived by cunning spirits 
who assume the most heavenly appearances of goodness and 
truth, every man and every woman would feel themselves mis- 
mated, and their search for conjugial partners would terminate 
in an unbridled lust of varieties. Those who are early let 
into these new experiences, will have great temptation to im- 
agine that they are favored instruments of heaven, far ad- 
vanced in spiritual purification, and to assume oracular and 
authoritative tones to those who are less receptive of divine 
influx. The possibilities of fantasy and delusion are here 
infinite. 

It is a possible thing for a man of really innocent and celes- 
tial character, especially if he be in the persuasive faith of 
the Old Church, to become obsessed by wicked and adulter- 
ous spirits, who assume the celestial so as to infuse into him 
all the delightful sensations of the conjugial sphere, even con- 
veying a fixed impression that the Lord Himself is present 
directing the phenomena. If not expelled, such spirits will 
lead the man with the utmost subtlety into spiritual adulteries, 
and finally into the lust of varieties, and so ultimate their 
hells upon earth. Such a state is the more dreadful, because 
the man cannot be made to see his real condition ; for his will- 
principle is obsessed, and he is compelled to think only that 
is true which corresponds to it. His proprium will utterly 
refuse to surrender its gratifications, but will justify them in 
the subtlest and most cunning manner, calling Swedenborg 
and the Word itself to its support. 

The impending progressive opening of the interiors, which 
is inevitable and necessary, no matter how dangerous and de- 
structive it may be, will be exceedingly dangerous to those who 



DESCENT THROUGH THE CONJUGIAL SPHERE. I49 

are confirmed in the interior evils and falsities of the Old 
Church, in which indeed a great many of our own people are 
involved far more deeply than they imagine. The divine 
mercy will no doubt hold this class fast in closed conditions, 
until the genuine New Jerusalem has been pretty well estab- 
lished upon the earth through other centres, so that they will 
come last into the light of the new life, without having their 
will-principle broken or their free agency infringed upon. 
The openings will be far less dangerous to the Gentiles, and 
to that unbelieving gentile Christendom which lies all about 
us; for in states of ignorance or denial the truths which are 
not accepted cannot be profaned. They will be least dan- 
gerous to those who are armed with the knowledges of spirit- 
ual things to be derived from Swedenborg ; and they will not 
be dangerous at all to those Newchurchmen who are con- 
sciously in the body of the Lord, who abstain from evils as 
sins against Him, who cultivate the conjugial love as the cen- 
tre of divine influx into the soul, and who look to the Divine 
Humanity, and not to angels, spirits, or men, for constant 
guidance and support. 

Such, my dear sir, are some of the most general truths con- 
cerning the descent of the Lord through the conjugial sphere 
into the spiritual truths of the Word, and thence into the 
ultimates of the natural plane, for the establishment of his 
New Church upon earth, in which his will shall be universally 
and organically done even as it is in heaven. 

There is but one sure ground of right and safety in the 
tremendous difficulties into which the opening of the interiors 
will plunge us ; and that is this : the external institution of 
marriage between one man and one woman must be preserved 
in all its legal and social vitality, at all hazards, under all 
13* 



ISO LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

circumstances, and at all temporal and spiritual sacrifices, 
until death shall separate the parties. From the celestial 
standpoint no ground of divorce is admissible, not even 
adultery.* That is a spiritual permission according to the 
law of truth ; but the law of love demands something different. 
The celestial man bears every wrong, seeking no redress ; he 
loves without demanding to be loved in return ; he forgives 
totally, infinitely, and forever; and, bearing the sorrows of 
separation in his own bosom, he clings with the utmost tenacity 
to the ultimate forms of union. 

The reason of this conduct on the part of the celestial man, 
(and remember that the Lord's New Church is to be a celestial 
man,) is this : he does not only regard the monogamical mar- 
riage from the spiritual standpoint as an ideal representative 
of goodness and truth, and of the union of the Lord with his 
church, but he also realizes in all the sensories of his body, 
that it is the central organic basis upon which the heavens 
rest and into which they flow ; an objective creation as vital 
and as necessary as the sun, perpetually kept in existence by 
the influx of the Divine life ; an ultimate correspondential form, 
more potent than all the laws and rituals of the Jewish church, 
on the stability and purity of which the peace, order, and 
happiness of the heavens and the earth depend. 

This transcendent view of the matter is involved in the 
interior senses of those wonderful words of our Lord found in 
Matt. xix. 4-6 : 

* The reader must not understand from this, that the author means to 
teach that the Lord's permission (Matt. v. 32 — " saving for the cause," 
etc.) is now revoked. It is still granted to such as are not in a state to 
accept or see what he regards as the highest or celestial truth on this 
subject. 



DESCENT THROUGH THE CONJUGIAL SPHERE. 1 5 1 

"Have ye not read, that He who made them at the beginning, 
made them male and female, 

"And said: For this cause shall a man leave father and 
mother, and shall cleave to his wife ; and they twain shall be 
one flesh ? 

" Therefore they are no 7nore twain, but one flesh. Wliat 
therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder." 

Marriage is not institutionally sacred like baptism and the 
holy supper, on account of its spiritual correspondence or its 
representative character ; but it is organically sacred from the 
beginning of the creation, being the first and supreme avenue 
by which the Divine life enters into the race. Therefore the 
religious life of the world, or the interior states of mankind as 
to goodness and truth, depends upon the condition of the 
marriage relation. Its external forms are like the forms of the 
letter of the Word, being the ultimate basis and containant 
into which all interior and superior things flow, and in which 
their fixity, security, and perpetuity are maintained. 

No good spirit or angel will therefore ever flow into a man 
to dissatisfy him with his married state, or to induce acqui- 
escence in the affections and thoughts of the old proprium on 
the subject. On the contrary they will always inculcate sub- 
mission and resignation, however lamentable the state of the 
married partners may be. They will teach and help both male 
and female to bear their crosses with faith and hope. So long 
as the external forms are maintained, the angels can flow in 
and assist in the great work of regeneration, by combating the 
evil spirits who assault us. But when the external bonds are 
sundered, both parties are in danger of falling deeper into the 
adulterous hells of the proprium, farther and farther from the 
reach of heavenly influences. " The blood of the martyrs is 
the seed of the church. ' ' The martyrs of the early New Church 



152 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

will be those who withstand the subtlest allurements of the 
proprium, and refuse to build their castle of spiritual happi- 
ness on any other foundation than the resolutely fulfilled obli- 
gations of external duty and honor. 

Yours fraternally, 

W. H. H. 



LETTER XVII. 

DIVORCE, FROM THE STAND-POINT OF THE CELESTIAL 
CHURCH. 



M 



" Y DEAR MADAM :— Your letter in relation to divorce, 
was written (unconsciously perhaps to yourself) from 
the sphere of that great modern movement (including 
woman's rights, socialism, and a thousand other things), which 
would emancipate us from all irrational or disagreeable usages 
of church and state, and give us the largest amount of indi- 
vidual liberty. It was the voice of woman separate from man, 
asserting her claim to the means of separate individual happi- 
ness and development. Whilst there is a great deal of good 
in this movement — the necessary destructions which prepare 
the way for a new order of things — there is also a great deal 
of evil. 

I will answer your questions seriatim. 

" Has God joined together those who ignorantly marry for 
worldly reasons, or for baser motives ? ' ' 

Certainly. God has joined them together, because they have 
voluntarily entered into the forms of his external law of mar- 
riage, and assumed its responsibilities " for better or worse.' ' 
Junction, however, or adjunction, is not conjunction ; and the 
external bond of marriage is the organic basis or containant 
in which two souls merely adjoined at first, may become by 
spiritual processes more and more conjoined to eternity. Our 
personal feelings and interests which all arise from the pro- 
prium, have nothing to do either before or after marriage with 

i53 



154 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

the sanctity and perpetuity of its external forms which God 
has established as the orderly organic basis for the perpetuation 
of the race, the preservation of society, and the regeneration 
of the individual. 

" If the woman so married grows to desire a purer and higher 
life, does not companionship with one whose desires and life 
grow continually baser, tend to drag her spiritually down- 
ward?" 

No : it does not. It simply opens a field, or presents op- 
portunities, for her higher spiritual development. Under such 
conditions she is placed, within the protective influences of 
God's external law, in a position to combat and conquer the 
deepest hells. During this terrible ordeal of self-sacrifice and 
martyrdom, she not only develops the celestial life in herself, 
but renders the salvation of the recreant husband more and 
more probable and possible, and stands as a mighty barrier 
against the influx of the adulterous hells into general society. 
I hold in my memory two cases of extraordinary character, 
and I have no doubt there are thousands of others in the sacred 
but unrecorded history of wifely heroisms. One husband was 
the most brutal drunkard I have almost ever known ; the other, 
an adulterer of the worst grade and under peculiarly aggravat- 
ing circumstances. Not one woman in a thousand would have 
endured for a month, what these two heavenly women, wives 
of these men, endured for nearly twenty years. With infinite 
patience, perseverance, forbearance, and forgiveness, they dis- 
charged their own personal, social, and religious duties, until 
both of these men were permanently reformed, and became 
good, faithful, and affectionate husbands. 

The fallacy which underlies all these pleas or apologies for 
divorce, is this : they inculcate the idea that by the mere 



DIVORCE— FROM THE HIGHEST POINT OF VIEW. 155 

change of surroundings we may change our own spiritual states. 
This is an appearance and not a reality. Change of surround- 
ings can only suppress for a time the manifestation of our true 
spiritual condition. Our spiritual states are only really changed 
for the better, by the unfolding of the Lord within us from 
centres to circumferences. O, the world of meaning which is 
involved in that idea ! External surroundings which enable 
us to manifest the humility, patience, forgiveness, and self- 
annihilation of our Lord, are not to be deprecated and 
abandoned, as abhorrent and painful, but to be clung to with 
the utmost tenacity. This doctrine is given to the saints and 
martyrs who ought to constitute the entire population of the 
Christian Church. 

You then suppose an extreme case of wrong and suffering, 
inheritance of terrible diseases, demoralization and corruption 
of children, etc., etc. Surely these are good reasons for 
divorce ? No : cries the voice of celestial love through the 
trumpet of spiritual truth. No : these cases and conditions 
are all met by reference to the laws of separation and living 
apart without divorce, each case standing on its individual 
merits, and the mode, time, and extent of separation being 
determined and modified by all the circumstances of the case. 
Thus separation, temporary or permanent, partial or complete, 
may be made to satisfy all the demands of wounded honor or 
sensitive duty, without resorting to the extreme measure of 
shattering the organic vessel, external marriage, into which 
the conjugial life of the heavens flows. 

" I am strongly inclined/ ' you say, " to believe that as we 
repudiate a false Church, so must we repudiate false personal 
relations. " 

The laws of external marriage, even in their personal rela- 



156 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

tions, are never false, because God has ordained them. Parties, 
through ignorance or otherwise, may transgress, override, or 
repudiate the law, in which event they become false to the law, 
and incur its penalties. The law, however, always remains 
true to them ; and all, at any time, after the most flagrant 
transgressions, may claim its spiritual protection by a return 
to a life of obedience to its requirements. 

We are permitted, in the exercise of our own rationality, to 
judge as to the truth or falsity of the claims of a church ; for 
Christ ordained no form for an external church, and we are 
at liberty to accept or repudiate any forms claiming to be 
churches. We have no such rational option given us in relation 
to the institution of external marriage, because it is as organic, 
sacred, and eternal as the heavens which rest upon it and flow 
through it. 

Hear what our Lord says : 

"Front the beginning of the creation, God made them male 
and female. 

"For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and 
cleave to his wife ; 

"And they twain shall be one flesh : so that they are no more 
twain but one flesh. 

" What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put 
asunder. 71 — Mark x. 6-9. 

Hear also what Paul says : 

"Unto the married, I command, yet not I, but the Lord : 
Let not the wife depart from her husband : 

"But and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be 
reconciled to her husband, and let not the husband put away 
his wife." — 1 Cor. vii. 10, 11. 

We must not judge of the value of the external bonds of 



DIVORCE— FROM THE HIGHEST POINT OF VIEW. 157 

marriage, from the poor results obtained at present among 
men. Those bonds are holy and indissoluble on account of 
their divine possibilities — on account of the end in view in the 
Divine Mind. They make it possible for a male to be trans- 
formed into a husband ; for a female to be transformed into a 
wife ; and for two souls to become one blended form of wis- 
dom and love from centre to circumference. The stupendous 
process may go on, and ought to go on, from the beginning 
even to perfect unitization of sex, when both make one angel 
in the image of God. When it is accomplished, it is folly to 
suppose that two such souls could ever be sundered by man or 
devil. It is only in the beginning and during the process that 
separation is possible ; and to prevent it under all conditions, 
the law is given, " What God hath joined together, let no man 
put asunder. ' ' 

But with earnestness of feeling and apparent cogency of 
reason you go still further. " Can the conjugial life of God 
flow into an inverted form of conjugial love? The Lord 
granted divorce for adultery, because that act, I suppose, broke 
the actual spiritual bond, and left no form into which the true 
conjugial life could flow ; and a mere sham relation could be 
no foundation for spiritual substance." 

Now, the conjugial life of God flows always into the exter- 
nal forms of marriage, which must be conceived of separately 
from the parties who have entered into those forms. The 
forms of the Holy Supper are not perverted and rendered use- 
less, because individuals partake of it unworthily, and eat and 
drink damnation to themselves. So a man may enter into 
the external relations of marriage, and fail to accept its or- 
ganic opportunities of spiritual development ; but nothing he 
can do can pervert or destroy the institution which is some- 



158 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

thing outside of himself, and in which his married partner 
may go on growing in the grace and power of conjugial love 
without an iota of his co-operation, and, indeed, it may be 
for another husband. This is plainly taught by Swedenborg. 

"Love truly conjugial may exist with one of the married 
partners and not at the same time with the other. One may 
from the heart devote himself to chaste marriage, while the 
other knows not what the chaste marriage is: one may love 
the things of the church whilst the other loves the things of 
the world alone : as to their minds, one may be in heaven and 
the other in hell : hence there may be conjugial love with one 
and not with the other." — C. L. 226. 

Now, my dear friend, you must be mistaken in supposing 
that our Lord permitted divorce because adultery on one side 
destroys the internal bonds of marriage, so that the spiritual 
life of the other party is imperiled if she maintain the exter- 
nal relation. Do you not think the Lord would have com- 
manded divorce for adultery in the most imperative manner, if 
the suffering and antagonism induced were really and of ne- 
cessity destructive to the spiritual life of the innocent party ? 
Moses allowed the Jews to put away their wives for many rea- 
sons, of which adultery was one, on account of the hardness 
of their hearts. Our Lord limits the cause for divorce to 
adultery alone ; but it still remained a permission and not a 
command. When He says: "Whosoever shall marry her 
that is divorced committeth adultery/' does it not imply that 
a divorced woman is still, interiorly speaking, indissolubly 
connected with her first husband ? 

"What is the use," you say, "of maintaining an external 
relation, when all the internal affections and thoughts are en- 
tirely alienated? " 



DIVORCE— FROM THE HIGHEST POINT OF VIEW. I 59 

Swedenborg fully answers this question also. 

" In case of matrimony in which the internal affections do 
not conjoin, there are external affections which assume a sem- 
blance of the internal, and tend to consociate." — C. L. 277. 

"Assumed conjugial semblances in the case of a spiritual 
man conjoined to a natural, are founded in justice and judg- 
ment. The reason of this is, that the spiritual man (or spir- 
itual woman) acts in all things from justice and judgment. 
Therefore he does not regard these assumed se?nblances as 
alienated from their internal affections, but as connected with 
them; for he is in earnest, and respects amend?nent as an 
end."—C. L. 280. 

All this plainly means, that so long as utterly uncongenial 
married partners respect and maintain the external bonds of 
marriage, and assume an outward semblance of unity and 
duty, they are subject to spiritual influxes v^hich may lead to 
amendment, reconciliation, and even final and perfect uni- 
tion. Only within the external bonds of marriage is there 
any hope, or safety, or promise of the conjugial life. Nor 
does a man break these bonds by adultery or any other 
wicked conduct. He may break his marriage vows, but the 
external invisible bonds of marriage hold him to his wife 
until they are sundered by death or legal enactment. The 
former is God's method, the latter is man's. Within their 
protective limits there is always a hope that the believing 
wife may save and sanctify the unbelieving husband, and vice 
versa. (1 Cor. vii. 14-16.) 

Even well-informed New-Church people seem often not to 
have grasped the idea of the genuine and rational uses of the 
institution of marriage. They demand that it shall be, in the 
beginning and all the way through, what it was only expected 



l60 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

or designed to be in the end — a perfect thing, its internal and 
external life and forms being always in beautiful and heavenly 
correspondence. They forget that it is a means to an end — 
an organic vessel for the insemination, growth, and perfection 
of the conjugial principle, which leads to the conjugial love, 
and that to the conjugial marriage which has seldom or per- 
haps never been fully attained upon earth. The imagination 
pictures her magnificent ideal, which is the reality of the 
future, but the soul is unhappy and desperate if it cannot 
realize it now and at once, and chafes under the slow and la- 
borious process of converting stagnant marshes into orchards 
and gardens, and wild beasts into natural men, and natural 
men into husbands of the angelic type. Admitting that all 
marriages are imperfect, and most of them miserable in one 
Way or other, yet the institution of marriage, holding within 
its golden bonds the most chaotic materials, has ever been 
the greatest conservator, civilizer, and spiritualizer of men 
and nations. When perfected, marriage will be heaven, with 
the Lord as its life. 

The conjugial principle is implanted in every man from 
birth among the celestial remains of infancy. It is manifested 
first in time, through all the gross and unreceptive media of 
the natural mind, as the love of the sex. When some woman, 
mirroring her little finite share of the divine perfections, fires 
the imagination and heart of a man, the conjugial principle 
is awakened or vivified in him and comes downward and for- 
ward, and manifests itself as the wonderful and mysterious 
passion of love. The conjugial principle, says Swedenborg, 
is the desire for marriage with one woman only. The conju- 
gial love is thus implanted in the mind, and the vague love 
of the sex becomes the chaste love of one of the sex. This 



DIVORCE— FROM THE HIGHEST POINT OF VIEW. l6l 

conjugial love grows stronger and stronger between the par- 
ties, through mutual joys and sorrows, sufferings and trials, 
forbearances and forgivenesses. Under these influences, the 
conjugial marriage, keeping step always with the progress of 
spiritual regeneration, becomes possible. Beginning feebly 
and faintly on earth, it is perfected in heaven, where Sweden- 
borg says of it, in a free translation : 

" There exist in the heavens conjugial pairs who are in such 
a state of conjugial love, that the two may be one flesh, and 
also are actually so whenever they will it ; and then they ap- 
pear as a single man," (unus homo). — A. E. 1004. 

This is a state which my friend G. W. C. calls unitization 
of sex, and which Swedenborg calls conjugial unition. This 
perfected state and all the intermediate states rest upon the 
external institution of marriage as their proper organic ulti- 
mate basis and containant. Within the protective limits of 
that ultimate, men and women are open, therefore, under 
proper conditions, to influxes from all the heavens. Outside 
of those limits we are remanded again to the sphere of ani- 
mal life and the mere love of the sex. Divorce must there- 
fore under all circumstances be a retrograde movement of the 
spiritual life. A second marriage does not restore the golden 
opportunities of the first, and open the heavens again ; for so 
long as the first partner lives, there will be the faint odor of 
an adulterous taint about it, which must repel the sensitive 
life of the celestial sphere. This is for those who can re- 
ceive it. 

When our Lord gives the permission of divorce on account 

of adultery, He is conversing about the laws of Moses, and 

is speaking from the stand-point of spiritual truth. It is the 

office of truth to judge, and if necessary, to condemn ; and 

14* L 



1 62 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

divorce is the work of condemnation, for it rejects, casts off, 
and cuts loose from all hope. When, however, He forgives 
the adulteress, He speaks from the celestial sphere, and soon 
afterward says : "Ye judge after the flesh : I judge no man." 
The celestial never judges or condemns. Being joined with 
its corresponding truth, its life is the life of forgiveness and 
up-building salvation. It is in the sabbath state, is utterly- 
dead to self, surrenders everything to the welfare of others, 
and is ready always to assume the evils of others, like our 
Lord, and to suffer with them and for them, actually prefer- 
ring to live in hell with the Lord, if thereby it could mitigate 
one pang of human misery. And in many of our domestic 
hells, opening into the hells of the spiritual w T orld, there are 
men and women of the celestial type, bearing the evils of 
others and looking to the Lord alone for strength and 
victory. 

In the New Church celestial now being ushered into the 
world, there will be no divorces, or second marriages, or do- 
mestic infelicities. The men will be wise, the women beau- 
tiful, the children perfect. Riches, power, distinction, pleas- 
ure will weigh with them no more than the dust in the balance. 
From the least to the greatest of them they shall know the 
Lord. This great and notable day of the Lord, which theo- 
logians put so far off that few people think of its coming, is 
close at hand. To those who are disheartened and appalled 
at the apparent state of the church, who doubt whether the 
great Red Sea of human passion can be stayed in its course, 
and who tremble lest the Egyptians of sensualistic science 
shall overwhelm the religious life of the race, we say : 

"Fear ye not : stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, 
which He will show you to-day : for the Egyptians whom ye 



DIVORCE— FROM THE HIGHEST POINT OF VIEW. 1 63 

have seen to-day, ye shall see them no more again forever" — 
Exodus xiv. 13. 

Now what is the ground of the opposition which men and 
women, even in the New Church, will raise to the principles 
laid down in this letter? Is it from a more comprehensive 
survey of New-Church truth? from a clearer perception of the 
meaning of the Word? from a deeper love for the neighbor? 
from a profounder yearning after the new life ? from a more 
thorough annihilation of self? from a more perfect following 
after the Lord ? Or is it not the voice of the old proprium, 
with its wounded sensibilities, disappointed hopes, outraged 
feelings, trampled rights, and selfish interests, crying out for 
liberty and satisfaction, and a new state, in which its own 
desires can be gratified, and its own individual development 
be permanently secured ? The natural man rejects the celestial 
truths now enunciated, because he does not wish to know them, 
nor to be brought into judgment by them ; and because he 
measures all good 'by the exaltations and gratifications of his 
own proprium. 

For the unhappy men and women so cruelly mated, whose 
cause you have so eloquently pleaded, there is one source of 
consolation, and the only true source never to be taken from 
them. It is this : 

1 ' Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and 
I will give you rest. 

"Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me : for I am meek 
and lowly in heart : and ye shall find rest unto your souls. 

"For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." — Matt. xi. 
28-30. 

Praying that we may all be found among the " meek and 

lowly in heart," I remain, 

Yours truly, W. H. H. 



LETTER XVIII. 

OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 

DEAR FRIEND :— When I wrote the letter entitled " Di- 
vorce, from the Stand-point of the Celestial Church," 
my friend G. W. C. remarked : " The feminine mind of 
the New Church, with its intuitive perception of truth, will 
accept your views more or less fully according to the states of 
the individual. The average masculine mind of the Church 
will hold them at arm's length, criticise them severely, pile 
objection upon objection, and be satisfied with difficulty." 
His prediction has been verified. 

My lady correspondents have encouraged my heart and 
strengthened my hands in the contest of interior truth against 
exterior appearances, as Aaron and Hur held up the hands of 
Moses in the wilderness. One of these calls the truths I have 
presented "pure water from the river of life,'* and declares 
she has no words to express her realization of their "holy 
depth and usefulness. " Another rejoices in these timely utter- 
ances, and especially that the N. J. Messenger gave them, in 
their fundamental points, such earnest and emphatic approval. 
A third, indorsing all I wrote, thanks me in the most eloquent 
terms for the article as the genuine antidote to the poison of 
the Woman's Rights idea. Those who have suffered most from 
unhappy marriages, are the warmest in their approbation of my 
position. Even a divorced lady, great and innocent sufferer 
as she is, perceives the radiance of celestial truth in the article, 

and declares : " If I had read that article a year ago, I would 

164 



OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 1 65 

have weighed the matter another fifteen years before I would 
have applied for a divorce.' ' 

Now for some of the objections from the masculine side, 
which you have presented. 

Your first position is, that the celestial man has nothing to 
do with the matter and nothing to say on the subject. Being 
organically builded into the heavenly marriage, where divorce 
is not only impossible but inconceivable, the celestial man, 
you think, will remand all questions of violated laws as to the 
sexual relations, to the spiritual and natural men, who are in 
states of humanity less mature and developed than his own. 
This would be true if the celestial man whom we are thinking 
and writing about, were an angel of the third or celestial 
heaven, existing in a discrete degree above and within our 
natural sphere, and communicating with us only by influx and 
correspondence. That is not the celestial man we are practi- 
cally interested in at present. We do not expect the celestial 
angels to descend and make their abode among men, and 
govern our affairs from their own stand-points; nor do we 
expect living human beings to be elevated above their own 
discrete degree, and live with the celestial angels. These 
things are simply impossible. 

The three interior degrees of the mind, however, which are 
properly called celestial, spiritual, and rational, co-exist in the 
natural plane of our life, not in discrete but in simultaneous ■ 
order. They are respectively opened and vivified according 
as men become, by faith and obedience, receptive of the life 
flowing from the heavens above them. The celestial-natural 
man of simultaneous order, does not propose to transform the 
earth into a third heaven, but is a medium through whom the 
celestial life of that heaven can flow down, transforming and 



1 66 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

becoming transformed, according to the states, exigencies, and 
evolutions of the natural degree. 

The celestial life, not as it is in the third heaven, but as it 
becomes in the inmost degree of the natural mind when that 
degree is opened to the Lord, will be the vital principle of the 
church of the future — of that New Jerusalem which descends 
from God out of heaven. When conjoined organically with 
its corresponding spiritual life, or life from the Lord's spiritual 
kingdom and from the spiritual sense of the Word, the two 
will constitute the church, which, as Swedenborg says, is always 
the heart and lungs of the world. The perception of the 
celestial-natural man and the illumination of the spiritual- 
natural man, will always harmonize and correspond, just in 
proportion as the marriage of good and truth is effected in the 
spirit, and the union of charity and faith is established in the 
life. This church will be the supreme, central, impregnating, 
and vivifying power in the natural sphere — however feeble, 
immature, and unorganized it seems at present. Its opinions 
and conduct upon all questions, private, sexual, social, civil, 
and ecclesiastical, will be matters of supreme interest to man- 
kind ; and its perceptions in relation to marriage and divorce 
are, at the present juncture of human affairs, of special im- 
portance. 

How far you seem from understanding or at least accepting 
the genuine New-Church idea of marriage, is evident from a 
single sentence in which you affirm that the legalized mono- 
gamical marriage of Christendom, is a mere permission of 
Divine Providence, like polygamy and concubinage, a mere 
accommodation to a little more advanced state of human 
development than is implied in the prevalence of the latter 
vices. You repudiate the idea so strongly presented by Sweden- 



OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. l6/ 

borg, that " the institution of monogamical marriage is founded 
upon the Word of the Lord," and that there is "a divine law 
inscribed upon marriages/' which makes the preservation of 
their external forms imperative amid the most extreme internal 
dissimilitudes — nothing whatever but adultery being allowed as 
an excuse for dissolving the covenant before death. "Assumed 
external conjugial semblances," as expedients to preserve the 
marriage bond intact, are spoken of by Swedenborg as emi- 
nently right, just, and proper; because the external institution 
of marriage has something vital, sacred, and transcendently 
useful in it, irrespective of the similarities or dissimilarities 
of the parties entering into it (see C. L., especially 276-92). 
It is easy to discover the source of your error. You have 
followed the line of the order of influx, instead of the line of 
the order of creation. Influx is from within outward and from 
above downward ; creation moves oppositely, from exteriors 
to interiors, from lower forms to higher forms. Your con- 
ception of marriage begins where its uses are really perfected, 
and you therefore overlook its spiritual uses in its early stages. 
The external institution of marriage is the ultimate form, 
representative and correspondent of the heavenly marriage 
of goodness and truth. Hence its holiness and usefulness. 
The angelic pairs rest upon it and have power, with us and 
for us, through it. But man is not born into the heavenly 
marriage. He is born sensuo-corporeal, with only an animal's 
love of the sex. Within the bonds of the one indissoluble 
marriage, the man is transformed into a husband and the 
woman into a wife. From sensual we become rational, spiritual, 
celestial, growing upward and inward, through means appointed 
and vivified by the Lord ; and these means are preeminently 
the Word, the church, and the institution of external mono- 



1 68 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

gamical marriage. These lead finally to that perfect form of 
spiritual unition — to God's marriage which no inan can sun- 
der ; but that is only attainable by processes on the natural 
plane, which transform a man into a husband and a woman 
into a wife. It is for these magnificent truths, practically re- 
pudiated or ignored in your letter, that Swedenborg's teachings 
on this subject are so immeasurably in advance of all others. 

The permissions by Divine Providence, of polygamy, con- 
cubinage, etc., etc., will be no doubt continued so long as 
they may be necessary in evil, false, and immature states of 
human society. The natural man will be permitted " to de- 
fend the chastity and honor of woman ' ' in his own imperious 
way, even with bowie-knife and revolver ; and the violence of 
his proprium may be very useful in repressing the influx of 
adulterous hells, or in restraining their manifestation, as duel- 
ling is said to be useful in suppressing the ill manners of a 
sensual and external people. But the institution of marriage 
is not a divine permission, but a direct provision of the Divine 
Providence for the protection, conservation, purification, and 
regeneration of human society. It is sacred like the letter 
of the Word, notwithstanding all contrary appearances, and 
however evilly and falsely it may be turned and perverted ; 
and like the letter of the Word, it is a recipient vessel for all 
the potentialities of spiritual and celestial life. 

How little, my dear friend, do you comprehend the char- 
acter of the celestial man, or the descent of the celestial 
church ! The celestial man has no rights to defend, having 
no proprium but the new proprium, which is a finited expres- 
sion of the Lord's love. If you smite him on one cheek, he 
will turn the other to be smitten. If you take away his cloak, 
he will give you his coat also. The celestial man has no du- 



OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 1 69 

ties to perform, and no conscience to worry him about their 
performance. The natural man contends for his rights ; the 
spiritual man is dutiful, and compels himself to obey the di- 
vine law. The celestial man is altogether free and spontane- 
ous. He lives out the divine truth joyously and easily, be- 
cause the divine love has displaced the selfhood in his soul. 
He has lost his life — and found it. He bears everything, 
hopes everything, forgives everything. He rejoices in tribu- 
lations, self-sacrifices, and sufferings, if they bear the heavenly 
fruit of good to the neighbor. Such a man or woman, initi- 
ated organically into the Lord's celestial-natural church, will 
not only cling to the bonds of marriage under all circum- 
stances until death ; but will descend into the hells of the un- 
conjugial partner, bearing the atmospheres of the Lord with 
him ; will contend with the wild beasts as He did ; and will 
be no more contaminated by his horrible surroundings, than 
He was when He " poured out his soul unto death " and was 
"numbered with the transgressors" — when He "bare the 
sins of many," and made intercession for sinners. 

This extraordinary phase of humanity, the celestial-natural 
man, is now being developed upon the earth. He is coming 
without the leave, indeed without the knowledge, of scorners 
and sceptics ; and his coming means the presence of the Lord 
in ultimates with angelic states of life, as gifts for his chil- 
dren. Through men and women of this type, our Lord will 
assume the hells in the Body of Humanity as He once as- 
sumed them in his own natural form ; will deliver us from the 
old Babylon which has made us all drunk with the wine of 
her fornications \ and, occupying the gateway between the 
spiritual and the natural worlds, will redeem the hells, and 
reorganize governments, churches, institutions, and even the 
15 



I70 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

physical constitution of man. Yes — He is coming ! The 
great " rose dawn " of the Celestial Church is visible above 
the eastern hills. Let every one of us prepare a way for the 
Lord in our own hearts, and make straight his paths: " for 
He cometh, for He cometh, to judge the earth./ ' 

In order to make the case a little clearer to your mind, I 
will give you some extracts from a letter of a New-Church 
minister, full of original, striking, and interesting thoughts, 
and presenting objections to G. W. C/s perceptions on the 
subject of Divorce, which are worthy of profound consider- 
ation. 

"The first advent of the Lord was not his real coming: it 
was only prophetic and representative of it. At his first com- 
ing, * everything the Lord did in the world was representa- 
tive, and everything He said was significative. ! (A. E. 405.) 
At his second coming, He comes to abide as a permanently 
visible God upon the earth, more really present than at his 
first coming. In truth, heaven is coming down to earth — 
heaven — because the Lord comes. Of course this is an ap- 
parent truth : the reality is rather that earth is raised to 
heaven, or in other words, the church by regeneration and 
the opening of its interiors, is raised to a heavenly state, so 
that earth and heaven are made one. The New Jerusalem 
comes down. The heavenly state is no longer confined to 
heaven, but is extended and transferred to earth. In other 
words, all the phenomena which we are accustomed to con- 
ceive of as taking place in heaven, are to take place on 
earth.-" 

This is a clear statement of what is really meant by the 
coming of the Lord with his holy angels — the descent of the 
divine life into the Body of Humanity, which He will infill, 
according to reception, with the heavenly states of love and 
wisdom which the angels enjoy. But it is necessary to guard 



OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. \J\ 

the mind against the idea that heaven and earth are to be 
upon the same plane, which the writer does not intend to 
teach. They will remain forever discrete, but they will be 
brought into perfect correspondence, so that what takes place 
in heaven spiritually, will take place upon earth naturally, 
the evil influence of the hells having been totally eliminated. 
The earth will remain forever the seed-field of creation, prop- 
agation, and evolution. Therefore the things which take 
place upon earth and the laws which govern them, will be 
different from those which take place in heaven ; but still 
they will be perfectly correspondent. 

" There is a certain work," he continues, " which in the 
past has been necessarily performed in the world of spirits. 
This work will, in the present dispensation, be performed on 
earth ; for if the Lord and heaven come down to earth, much 
more will the world of spirits and its work come down to 
earth. The final preparation of the soul for heaven, which 
has hitherto been conceived of as taking place after death, 
will now take place before death. This is a better place for 
it than the world of spirits. Swedenborg says that some go 
immediately to heaven after death. In the present dispen- 
sation they will not wait so long as that. They will go to 
heaven before death. This is the very idea of the second 
coming of the Lord, and of the New Jerusalem coming 
down." 

Do you not see that this writer is leading us cautiously and 
logically to a powerful argument in favor of divorce and 
its almost indefinite extension ? He is one of the very few 
New-Church ministers who have discovered the tremendous 
truth, that the general judgment predicted by the Lord and 
the Word has not come but is coming ; that Swedenborg' s 
last judgment was only a small, partial, and trifling affair in 



172 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

comparison ; only a judgment upon the last church (for every 
church has had its judgment), or rather upon that portion of it 
that went neither to heaven nor hell, but remained in mixed 
states, hanging in the world of spirits like a great cloud be- 
tween heaven and earth. That judgment let the light of 
spiritual truth through into the world, as a messenger to pre- 
pare the way of the Lord. This writer perceives that the 
real, final, universal judgment is to be produced by the per- 
sonal descent of the Lord from centres to circumferences. 
The work in the world of spirits (the unfolding of interior 
states by casting off externals) will really be done upon earth. 

" In the world of spirits, we are taught, the external bonds 
of marriage are loosened ; and disregarding all previous re- 
lations of that kind, those come together who are or can be, 
conjugially united. This loosening of external bonds does 
not tend to the disintegration of society, as it would have 
done under a former dispensation, because the New Jerusa- 
lem or heaven has come down to the earth. The external 
bonds of marriage are not to be destroyed, but they are to be 
* loosened ' so that there can be adjustments from spiritual 
motives, and men and women shall not be held together by 
a mere blind law, which recognizes no distinction. The 
latter has been necessary ; but it is not to be necessary when 
the Lord comes. External divorces may therefore be allowed, 
that internal marriages may take place. Yet these divorces 
will be more frequent at first than afterward, because mar- 
riages in the new dispensation will not be so ignorantly con- 
tracted as before." 

This writer assumes our own position, that the personal at- 
mosphere of the Lord is entering the Body of Humanity ; that 
the judgment impends ; that our interiors will be opened so 
that the inner life will proclaim itself in ulti mates ; that old 



OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. I73 

states and conditions are to be unsettled and broken up, and 
a general readjustment and reconstruction are to be effected. 
Now if church and state, with all their varied institutional 
forms, are to be dissolved and rebuilded, why should not all 
the evil and false marriages in the world be subjected to the 
same process ? Why should not the opportunities of divorce 
be vastly enlarged and extended ? Indeed, how can the nec- 
essary disintegrations and readjustments take place, unless 
the bonds of marriage are greatly " loosened M ? This appa- 
rently logical inference is drawn from a one-sided or partial 
view of the subject. 

This writer thinks there will be no danger to society from 
the extended facilities of divorce, because heaven is coming, 
and in heaven all live in mutual love ; and when external 
bonds there are removed, the parties are only drawn more 
closely together. But the very paragraph he quotes (A. C. 
5002) also says, that when external bonds are removed with 
the wicked, they break forth into all extremes of hatred and 
violence. Our friend ignores the fact that the opening of the 
interiors brings the hells as well as the heavens down to earth. 
It all seems plain sailing, and lovely and beautiful and just, 
when heavenly souls are unchained from devilish partners, 
and allowed to seek their own conjugial mates. But who does 
not see that when the bonds of marriage are loosened and 
divorce made easy, the flood-gates of hell are opened also ; 
and that the in-flowing adulterous passions and lust of varie- 
ties would precipitate mankind into contentions, miseries, 
sufferings, and crimes indescribable ? 

This terrible state, of things is no doubt coming, and is a 

hideous part of the general judgment — the lake of fire into 

which the old proprium plunges itself when let loose to work 
15* 



174 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

" its own sweet will." But it is not to be expected that New- 
churchmen shall aid in this vastating and devastating process. 
Will they not rather raise a standard against it ? Will they 
not plant themselves on the rock of ultimate truth at any price 
of self-denial and individual suffering? Will they not cling 
to the letter of the Word and to the external institution of 
marriage, as fixed, organic forms instinct with spiritual power, 
capable and alone capable of protecting and preserving us 
from the overwhelming influx of the hells ? 

" Because the external bonds of marriage/' says my friend 
G. W. C, " are loosened in the world of spirits, it does not 
follow that they will be loosened upon earth, when the earth 
comes to put on the state of the world of spirits by entering 
into judgment. In the worlS of spirits externals are not fixed, 
but simply reflect the changing internals of the spirit. On 
the earth externals are fixed, and cannot change according to 
the changes of man's internal states; and so will it ever be, so 
long as the difference between materiality and substantiality 
exists." 

The sun of the natural world is a fixed, organic form, into 
which the spiritual forces of the sun of heaven enter, and 
there become the creative forces of nature. The letter of the 
Word is a fixed organic form, into which the celestial and 
spiritual goods and truths of the Lord through the heavens 
enter, and thence become the forces of the regenerating life. 
Just so the external institution of marriage between one man 
and one woman is a fixed organic form, into which the divine 
life flows, and manifests itself as conjugial love, mutual love, 
charity, and all the virtues and graces of .a truly human exist- 
ence. The external bonds of marriage are betrothals, nup- 
tials, cohabitation, and living together, instituted by mutual 



OBJECTIONS ANSWERED, 175 

consent, sanctioned by the church, and legalized by the civil 
power, so that the parties are regarded, both spiritually and 
naturally, as one in thought, feeling, and interest. The 
enormous importance, value, and power of this institution 
upon which the order of the heavens is based, may be further 
comprehended from these very suggestive remarks of G. W. C. 

" Marriage is not based on the civil law and its require- 
ments. External marriage is based on the commandment of 
God (in order that a human society, capable of progress, 
should exist), and it is entered upon by consent of parties. 
How many parties enter directly or indirectly into the con- 
tract, it would be difficult to show. From the stand-point of 
the good of society alone, we see that the whole external com- 
munity, and, indeed, the whole world of associated man, has 
a vital interest in it. Vast ramifications of its sphere run 
also through the spirit-world, and the life-principle of many 
persons in the world of spirits and in the heavens, is always 
deeply involved with each and every external marriage as 
the basis and containant of a higher life to them in the interior. 
Can a contract be fairly broken without the consent of all 
these visible and invisible parties in interest? " 

The celestial man can never go back on his assertions (and 
remember, that to assert is not to dictate), for what he calls 
truth is seen from the state of good he is in. The celestial 
man perceives that the external institution of marriage is a 
fixed, sacred, and eternal ultimate of divine power for the 
regeneration of the individual and the race. Recognizing 
the infinite loving accommodations of our Lord to all degrees 
and states of life, He still clearly perceives that all the spiritual 
changes, adjustments, and readjustments, necessary for the new 
.life, can be better effected within the bonds of marriage than 



I76 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

outside of them. The miseries of ill-assorted marriages are 
not so great as those which will inevitably follow the slightest 
loosening of the bonds of marriage. The time will come 
when all the living will have been delivered from their prison- 
houses, and all the new-born will be ushered into life, dowered 
with the certainty of a blissful married state. 

Yours fraternally, 

W. H. H. 



LETTER XIX. 

THE CELESTIAL FORGIVE ALL THINGS, EVEN ADULTERY. 

MY DEAR FRIEND:— You are apprehensive that my 
statement, that the celestial admit no causes of divorce, 
not even adultery, may be considered antagonistic to the 
teachings of Swedenborg and the Word. You think so because 
you have momentarily forgotten the doctrine of discrete de- 
grees, and the fact that what is enjoined or permitted upon a 
lower plane, as " an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth/' 
may be absolutely prohibited on a higher plane — " but I say 
unto you." (Matt. v. 32-48.) 

Moses, who represented divine spiritual truth, permitted the 
natural and sensual Jews to divorce their wives for causes 
which interior men absolutely repudiate. Swedenborg, in 
accommodation to the usages of his day, permits concubinage 
and separations to the unregenerate natural man (see C. L.), 
which the spiritual man instinctively and with horror refuses 
to accept as laws of permission applicable to his own spiritual 
state. The Jews were permitted to put away their wives on 
account of " the hardness of their hearts," because the celestial 
degree was closed in them ; and our Lord who always stoops 
and writes with his finger on the ground, or accommodates 
Himself to our lowest natural states, gave permissions within 
the limits of which it was still possible for something of spiritual 
life to be preserved. 

But He expressly declares that "from the beginning it was 

not so" — that man and woman were made to be one in spirit 

M 177 



I78 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

and in body — one and inseparable. In the celestial- degree 
separations are therefore impossible. In the spiritual degree 
and the spiritual church He was about to establish ("I say 
unto you"), only one cause of divorce was admissible; and 
that was not adultery, as is commonly supposed, but prostitu- 
tion. The Word employs two different expressions on this 
subject (Matt. v. 32, and xix. 9). The Greek word nopvkia 
{porneia) translated fornication, has a far deeper and stronger 
signification. It means prostitution, the life of the harlot, the 
confirmed and fixed state of the sensual reprobate. It is true 
that heaven is closed to any one who commits adultery ; but 
it may be opened again by earnest prayer and repentance. 
The spiritual man has no right to separate himself totally and 
forever from his wife, until from an adulteress she becomes a 
prostitute. The celestial man occupies a still higher plane, 
as we will presently see. 

. Our Lord recognizes, indeed teaches, the discrete degrees 
of doctrine upon this subject. When the Jews, appalled by 
the apparent strictness of his limitations, say to Him : If such 
be the case, "it. is not good to marry :" He replies, 

* 'All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is 
given. ' ' 

He then goes on to mention three discrete classes of eunuchs, 
who are, according to Swedenborg (A. C. 394), the subjects 
of the heavenly marriage, and represent the celestial, spiritual, 
and natural degrees of that marriage ; concluding with these 
words : " He that is able to receive it, let him receive it." 

Matthew is the only evangelist who alludes to any cause as 
sanctioning divorce. Mark (x. 11) and Luke (xvi. 18) say, 
without any excepting clause, that he who puts away his wife 



THE CELESTIAL FORGIVE ALL THINGS. 1 79 

and marries another, commits adultery. John, writing from 
the celestial sphere, has no hint of divorce, but teaches the 
unconditional and perpetual forgiveness of the sinner. The 
story of the woman taken in adultery, is not to be found in 
the oldest copies we have of the New Testament ; and it was 
long repudiated by the men of the spiritual church, no doubt 
because it contained a doctrine which they were not prepared 
to accept or even to understand. Its spiritual sense, as revealed 
by Swedenborg, establishes its claim to divine inspiration ; 
and the fact that the incident is narrated just after Jesus de- 
scends from the Mount of Olives " early in the morning" 
into the temple, and sits down to teach the people, shows to 
those acquainted with the science of correspondences, that 
its heavenly light came down from the celestial through the 
spiritual into the natural sphere of life for our instruction. 

The celestial (divine good) judges all to heaven ; the spirit- 
ual (divine truth, or the laws of order) condemns all to hell. 
A. C. 2258. It is only by the union of the two, that jus- 
tice is tempered with mercy. The process of divorce implies 
accusation, judgment, and punishment. The celestial man 
cannot possibly engage in such work. It is repugnant to his 
organic nature to accuse, condemn, or punish. This is the 
proper work of spiritual truth. While, therefore, divorce on 
sufficient grounds is permitted to the natural and even to the 
spiritual man, the celestial man utterly refuses to avail himself 
of any such permissions. He may withdraw himself, but he 
refuses to recognize the dissolution of the external marriage 
bond during the life of the offending party, not only because 
he cannot accuse, condemn, or punish, but because his love 
reaches forth indefinitely, and can never despair of the final 
reformation and salvation of the sinner whom he would always 



l8o LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

willingly die to save; for "the life of the celestial Brian," as 
G. W. C. says, "is Christ's life in limitations.' ' 

How little we really know of the celestial man, notwithstand- 
ing Swedenborg's unfoldings ! Few of us will recognize him 
when we see him. He will come to his own, and his own will 
receive him not. In the eyes of the natural and spiritual man, 
he will do all sorts of foolish things, perhaps, and entertain all 
sorts of questionable opinions; and they will pronounce him a 
crank or a spiritualist or a victim of enthusiastic spirits. He 
will care nothing whatever for their opinions of him, and will 
take their exact measure, not from what they say of themselves, 
but from what his own perceptions tell him they are. A patient, 
quiet, unpretentious, happy kind of a fellow, never combat- 
ing, never disputing ; whom it is impossible to insult ; always 
in the rear, or at the sides, or somewhere out of sight, loving 
his neighbor more than himself without professing to love him 
even as much. He ignores church matters and authorities so 
absolutely, that most people would think he was no Christian 
at all. We may even think him a fool, but he has immeasur- 
able stores of wisdom, vastly transcending our spiritual treas- 
ures, especially on the subject of marriage, which he either 
cannot or will not communicate to us. Look out for this man 
of the antediluvian type, for he is about to be unfolded into 
the world. Will he not perish for want of a suitable environ- 
ment ? 

Yours truly, 

W. H. H. 



LETTER XX. 

SWEDENBORG'S VIEW OF EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL. 



M 



Y DEAR SIR : — As you believe the writings of Swe- 
denborg are divine, and as I accord them an authority 
second only to that of the Word, it must be a matter 
of great interest to us to know what they really do teach. As 
we differ on some important points, we may both be benefited 
and possibly brought nearer together by comparing opinions 
in an amicable manner. 

In the first place, it would be well for you — who seem to 
think that there is no orderly state of the human spirit in this 
world, but that of a closed and fixed natural condition entirely 
instructed from without — to consider profoundly the following 
extract from Swedenborg, which gives the key to the spiritual 
states of Guyon and Fenelon, and of a great many people at 
the present time, concerning those at this day who are, as it 
were, a remnant of the Ancient Church : — 

" There are still some who retain and preserve much of the 
Ancient Church, and who are especially distinguished by that 
feature of it by which they perceive whether anything is good. 
For this reason, also, they are rejected of others, who suppose 
that they are to be classed with enthusiasts ; when yet this was 
a peculiarity of the Ancient Church, that they had a percep- 
tion of what was good, and thence of what they should do, 
acknowledging the operation of spirits, but recognizing 
in themselves that only of the Lord's spirit, and rejecting 
others."— S. D. 1987. 

16 181 



1 82 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

There is no difference of opinion between us, although you 
seem to think so, in relation to the importance and uses of 
external truth, the external church, the external Word, and 
external instruction of all kinds. Man is now born in utter 
ignorance (though he might be born into all knowledges, A. 
C. 1902) ; and he must be initiated into truths by instruction, 
so that from natural he may become spiritual, and from spir- 
itual celestial. Even the progress of our Lord in the union 
of the human essence with the Divine, was effected according 
to this instruction by continual revelations. (A. C. 2500.) 
We only differ as to the stand-points from which we view these 
things. Looking from an exterior sensual stand-point, you 
view them as objects of thought. Looking from an interior 
natural stand-point, I see them subjectively, or as correspond- 
ences which reveal to me the causes which produce them. 
(A. C. 10,204.) You are perfectly right as far as you go. Not 
going as far as I go legitimately and logically, I seem to you 
to go wrong. 

I plant myself firmly upon such general truths as the follow- 
ing announced by Swedenborg : 

There is nothing in externals but what is produced from 
the interior, and thus successively from the inmost. — A. C. 
994-5- 

The things which appear in externals flow in from the inte- 
rior, and solely from the Lord. — A. C. 1954. 

Thoughts and ideas exist by virtue of influx from within 
and not from without. — A. C. 3220. 

The internal clothes itself with such things in the external 
as may enable it, in that inferior sphere, to produce effect. — ■ 
A. C. 6275. 



SWEDENBORGS TEACHING ON THE SUBJECT. 183 

The life of the external man is sensual and exterior, or it is 
natural and interior, according as his truths are from exter- 
nal objects or from the causes of them. — A. C. 10,254. 

Your fundamental error, it seems to me, is that you take 
the condition of man in his lowest external state as the nor- 
mal type and standard which regulates God's government to- 
ward him, regardless of what he has been in the past or what 
he may be in the future. You seem to forget that he is now 
in an abnormal, disorderly state, from which the Second 
Coming of the Lord is to rescue him. The loss of percep- 
tion, the development of conscience, the ultimation of the 
Word in several forms, the establishment of external worship 
(A. C. 4493), and the necessity for external instruction, are 
all signs and proofs of the decadence of the spiritual life, and 
of a fall from interior and superior to exterior and inferior 
conditions. 

You do not seem to realize the stupendous fact that the 
New Church is to be a celestial Church, and the life of gen- 
uine Newchurchmen is to be a celestial life. You do not 
rise in your philosophy or theology above the conception of 
a life of obedience in the external man. You forget that the 
marriage of good and truth, the heavenly marriage, does not 
take place between good and truth of one and the same de- 
gree, but between the inferior of the one and the superior of 
the other. (A. C. 3952.) Thus the natural truths of the Word 
are married to the spiritual goods of a superior degree, and 
this produced the spirituality of the first Christian Church. 
So the spiritual truth of the New Church in us, must be mar- 
ried to the celestial goods of the degree above, and that will 
ultimate the celestial life in the world. 

Study the laws and phenomena of the celestial life as un- 



184 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

folded in Swedenborg, if you would understand and even 
foresee the forms in which the heart of the Lord's New 
Church will finally be manifested in the world. You will 
then perceive that there are two sources of revelation and 
instruction ; one that takes a comparatively external way 
through the understanding, necessitated by the fall of man ; 
and the other, a far higher, holier, more interior, and produc- 
tive way, through the regenerated will. You will see that 
after man is initiated into truths according to your own con- 
ceptions, if those truths are really conjoined to good, he rises 
into a discretely higher state, when not only the former truths 
become clearer and clearer to him, but innumerable other 
truths never known or revealed to him before, are imparted 
to him; until " the light of truth from good increases im- 
mensely, and becomes a continuous lucidity — for he is then 
in the light of heaven, which is from the Lord." (A. C. 

3*33-) 

Read also the following memorable paragraph from Swe- 
denborg, and see in it the state which not only once existed 
generally in the world, but which has occasionally cropped 
out in all ages and churches, and which is the sure heritage 
of the men of the New Church in whom spiritual truths shall 
be conjoined to celestial goods. 

" The men of the celestial church are such that they per- 
ceive all the goods and truths of heaven from the Lord by in- 
flux into their interiors : whence they see goods and truths 
inwardly in themselves as implanted, and have no need to 
learn them by a posterior way, or to treasure them up in their 
memory." — A. E. 739. 

Now it possibly seems to you that such people are possessed 
by enthusiastic spirits, and receive their revelations and in- 



SWEDENBORCS TEACHING ON THE SUBJECT. 1 85 

structions outside of the Word and the church. But it is not 
so. The Word which created all things, is something infi- 
nitely greater than that little portion of it which we see in the 
literal sense and in the writings of Swedenborg \ for it is the 
infinite Divine Wisdom — the Divine Truth, omnipresent, om- 
niscient, omnipotent. When we are in the Lord and the 
Lord in us, we are in the Word, in heaven, in the church. 
If we abide in the Vine, we shall bring forth much fruit, but 
not otherwise ; for without Him we can do nothing. 

You are afraid that if our regeneration were so close an im- 
age of the Lord's glorification as I represent it to be, "we 
would all be the Lord," and the Doctrines would be charged 
with Pantheism. Have you no clear conception of the mean- 
ing of the life which is "hid with Christ in God" — or of our 
Lord's own words, "He that eateth my flesh and drinketh 
my blood, dwelleth in me and I in him"? Does not Swe- 
denborg say that when the externals of an angel are quiescent, 
he knows no otherwise than that he is the Lord Himself? 
Does he not say that the new proprium is a new life given us 
to feel as if it were our own, but that it is really the Lord in 
us, while we ourselves in our own proprium are filthy masses 
of excrement ? Why is it that Newchurchmen have never 
yet, in their writings, sermons, or journals, fully accepted 
Swedenborg's doctrine of the new proprium, and pushed it 
to its only logical issue — the perfect sanctification of the soul 
and the redemption of the body from the power of all sin ? 
or, in other words, the Lord's life in us, and not our own? 

You are clearly wrong, I think, in affirming that there is no 

source of knowledge but external instruction through the Word 

and the Writings. That may be true of the child, but it is 

not so of the adult who, in the course of his regenerating life, 

16* 



1 86 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

has had the spiritual or celestial degree opened in him. Such 
a man is in the celestial and spiritual senses of the Word with- 
out knowing it ; and he may be illumined from within by the 
light of heaven flowing through a regenerated will into his un- 
derstanding. There is no other way of accounting for the tre- 
mendous spiritual, rational, and scientific progress of the last 
hundred years, which has not been made by the formation of 
vessels of reception by instruction in the Writings. ' The in- 
terior Word is descending everywhere through the opening of 
the celestial degree, and producing innumerable approxima- 
tions to divine truth in the minds of men, without the slight- 
est aid from the writings of Swedenborg, or from those who 
seize upon them to build up an external church without the 
least authority from the Lord for doing so. 

You say that the external heaven and earth of the human 
proprium is to flee away, just as the external heaven and earth 
of the spiritual world fled away at the Last Judgment, viz. : 
by instruction in divine truth by divinely appointed means. 
Such is not Swedenborg' s account of the matter. Influx for 
judgment and for instruction are two different processes. 
Read his account of the causes of the breaking up of the ex- 
ternal heavens and earth, whether they exist in the spiritual or 
the natural world. 

" The Lord, when the judgment was at hand, caused the 
heavens to draw near over the world of spirits, and by this ap- 
proach of the heavens such a change of state in the interiors 
of the minds of those who were below was effected, that they 
saw nothing but terrors before their eyes." — A. R. 342. 

" Winds exist [in the spiritual world] from & strong and pow- 
erful influx of the Divine through the heavens into the lower 
parts of the spiritual world ; and when the influx comes, it 



SWEDENB ORG'S TEACHING ON THE SUBJECT. 1 87 

fills truths and goods, that is, it fills those who are in truths 
and goods with the Divine as to their soul and spirit ; but those 
whose interiors consist merely of falsities and evils, and their 
exteriors of truths mixed with falsities and of good mixed with 
evils, cannot sustain such influx from the Divine ; consequently 
they betake themselves to their own falsities and evils which 
they love, and reject the truths and goods which they do not 
love, except for the sake of self and of the appearance. ' ' — A. 
E. 419. 

" When the Divine proceeding from the Lord fiows in in- 
tensely, the apparent goods with the evil are dissipated, since 
they are not goods in themselves but evils, and evils cannot sus- 
tain the influx of the Divine. Hence it comes to pass that the ex- 
ternals of such are shut, and these being shut, the interiors are 
opened, in which there are nothing but evils and falsities thence 
derived j whence they come into grief, anguish, and torment, 
and in consequence thereof cast themselves down into the 
hells where similar evils and falsities have place. " — A. E. 419. 

From these paragraphs you see that the organic spiritual 
causes of the Last Judgment were not " instructions according 
to divinely appointed means," but a more intense influx of 
the Divine through the heavens into the world of spirits, the 
descent of the Lord, the approach of the heavens above the 
world of spirits nearer to it, and the opening of the interiors 
of the people in that world ; so that the good became better 
and were elevated into heavenly places, and the evil became 
worse and precipitated themselves into infernal consociation. 

I believe that the causes thus inaugurated in the spiritual 
world are still operative, and "that judgment and the coming 
of the Lord are continuous events — keys to the history of the 
last hundred years, and to the still more astonishing history 
which is impending. You do not believe it, mainly because 



1 88 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

Swedenborg has not said so. Swedenborg was no prophet, 
and did not undertake to unveil the future. What was the 
future to him has now unfolded itself, and it can only be ex- 
plained by the sublime principles and truths revealed in the 
writings of the herald of the New Church. You refuse to see 
anything outside of Swedenborg. I accept all phenomena, all 
authenticated facts, including all the evil effects of the Lord's 
coming to the evil, not excepting Spiritualism of which I am 
not " foolishly afraid/ ' and study and explain them by the 
light of the heavenly doctrines. When you have attained to 
the same degree of rationality, you will discover that I am not 
a spiritist nor a victim of enthusiastic spirits. In the mean- 
time, let us allow the largest liberty of opinion to each and all, 
and still, like John's little children, let us " love one another.' ' 
Yours fraternally, 

W. H. H. 



LETTER XXI. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF CREATION: NATURE ABSOLUTELY 

DEAD. 



M 



* Y DEAR FRIEND : — You ask me what I mean by my 
statement, that all external phenomena are caused by 
the influx of the heavens and the hells into the natural 
plane of the human mind. 

This is an infinite subject of which Swedenborg says many 
volumes might be written, and every attempt of ours to con- 
ceive it or understand it must be feeble and obscure, because 
we think from time and space of phenomena whose real causes 
are independent of time and space. Still, with the mighty 
help of Swedenborg we may make some valuable approxima- 
tions to the truth. 

The natural plane of the human mind with its three con- 
tinuous degrees, exterior-rational, scientific, and sensual, is 
the basis or ultimate upon which the entire spiritual world 
rests, and into which and through which the heavens and the 
hells perpetually flow. Swedenborg says that man in this 
degree of his life, is " the gateway between the Divine and 
nature." All within and above him is spiritual, all outside 
of and below him is natural. All the former things are sub- 
stantial, all the latter things are material. All the former 
are living and never die : all the latter are dead and never 
live. 

It is a fixed point of Swedenborg's philosophy, that what 
we call nature is absolutely dead. The sun is dead, and all 



I9O LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

things derived from it are dead. The forms of matter have 
no properties, no affinities, no motions, no transformations, 
due to any causes below the natural plane of the human mind. 
There are nothing but effects below that plane : all the causes 
lie in it or above it. Everything in nature owes its cause and 
all its phenomena to somewhat in the spiritual world. (A. C. 
82 1 1.) Material forms are discreted from pre-existent spiritual 
forms or substances, and have no life or power of motion or 
change in themselves. " The substantial," says Swedenborg, 
" is the primitive element of the material. " This extreme 
and true position of Swedenborg must be maintained clearly 
in the mind, or we open the flood-gates of Naturalism, and 
fall into confusion and darkness. 

"Were what is spiritual separated from what is natural, 
that which is natural would be annihilated. All things derive 
their origin in this manner. Everything, both in general and 
in particular, is from the Lord. From Him is the celestial 
principle ; by the celestial from Him exists the spiritual prin- 
ciple ; by the spiritual, the natural; and by the natural, the 
corporeal and sensual; and as each thus exists from the 
Lord, so also does it subsist, for subsistence is perpetual exist- 
ence.' ' — A. C. 775. 

"Whatsoever exists in the natural world derives its birth 
and cause from those things which exist in the spiritual world, 
since universal nature is nothing else but a theatre representa- 
tive of the Lord's kingdom. Hence come correspondences. 
The variations of light and shade, also of heat and cold in 
the earths, are indeed from the sun, viz., from the difference 
of its altitudes every year and every day in the various regions 
of the earth ; but these causes which are proximate and in the 
natural world, were created according to those things in the 
spiritual world, as by their prior causes efficient of the poste- 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF CREATION. I9I 

rior causes which exist in the natural world ; for there is 
nothing at all given in the natural world, which does not de- 
rive its cause and birth from the spiritual." — A. C. 821 1. 

We thus see that all proximate causes in the natural world 
are simply effects of prior spiritual causes. It is from the 
stand-point of these truths, my dear sir, that I made and re- 
iterate the statement, that sidereal motions, planetary move- 
ments, geological changes, storms of wind and water, chemi- 
cal affinities and transformations, vegetable and animal forms 
and forces, and I may add, all diseases and accidents, all the 
phenomena of evolution, and all the developments of history, 
language, art, science, religions, are caused, directed, and 
modified by the influx of the creative life through the heav- 
ens and the hells into the natural plane of the human mind. 
If I have been able to comprehend it at all, this is a funda- 
mental point of Swedenborg's philosophy of creation. Hear 
him again : 

"Man is created according to the forms of the three heav- 
ens, and thus there is impressed on him the image of heaven ; 
so that man is, in the least form, a little heaven, and thence 
comes his correspondence with the heavens. Hence, also it 
is, that through man alone there is a descent from the heavens 
into the world, and an ascent from the world into the heav- 
ens." — A. C. 4041-2. 

Such evidence might be indefinitely extended ; but it seems 
to me unnecessary. Your only real difficulty appears to be, 
that sidereal motions, geological changes, etc., etc., existed 
before the creation of the finite human mind. But how about 
the Divine Mind, which is only the infinitely human mind 
from which all substances and materials receive their conatus 



I92 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

and impetus toward the human form? In Him all human 
forms, forces, and revolutions exist in an eternal Now and 
Here. Could not the Divine Mind have moulded the physical 
universe for the ultimation of man, by creative influx through 
the substantial spiritual forms of the race, before they re- 
ceived conscious natural existence by fixation upon the natu- 
ral plane ? These ideas may be too high and too deep for 
us to grasp ; but the truth lies somewhere there in the spir- 
itual sphere, and not at all in the natural sphere where the 
evolutionists teach that a primordial substance appeared of 
itself, and spontaneously developed and evolved, without 
spiritual or divine influx, into the splendid cosmos we see 
around us. 

But you may say : If the phenomena preparatory to the 
creation of man were evolved through the Divine Natural 
Humanity, the effects in ultimates should betray no indications 
of imperfection or disorder: how then about the hideous 
monsters of our primeval eras, the desperate struggle for ex- 
istence, the survival of the fittest, etc. ? We are greatly mis- 
taken when we reason from the creation of our single world, 
as if it was the first and only one created, and stood all alone 
by itself for analysis. The problem, instead of being so simple, 
is infinitely complex. The natural plane, and indeed all the 
planes of the human mind, extend throughout the created 
universe ; and every world receives influx from all the others. 
We belong to the cuticle of the Grand Man. We have infi- 
nite consociations with other spheres, external and internal, 
of which we know nothing. The geological and embryonic 
phenomena of our earth, may have been caused by influxes 
from remote spheres of the spiritual universe. 

Leaving the past behind us, of which we know so little, and 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF CREATION. I93 

taking all things just as they now stand, we can surely com- 
prehend, without any great effort, the idea, that the grand 
complex of all the phenomena of nature, is an effect and rep- 
resentative of the infinite changes going on in the spiritual 
universe. 

Yours truly, 

W. H. H. 
17 N 



M' 



LETTER XXII. 

ADVICE TO A WOUNDED SPIRIT. 

Y DEAR MADAM:— We have read your letters with 
great interest and feel for you a profound sympathy. 
You are a good type of many wounded spirits, of many 
Christian daughters of sorrow. We have perceived your states, 
your powerful efforts to retrieve and maintain past conditions, 
your yearnings for light and guidance, your hopes, griefs, and 
despairs. We have a few things to say to you, both old and 
new — for he is not a good householder who cannot bring 
forth both kinds out of his treasure. 

In the first place, break all your idols ; and we have many 
idols whose existence we do not suspect, until we come to clean 
out the temple of our hearts for the entrance of the Lord. 
Begin the new life and re-begin it every day, by leaving the 
old ship and the nets, and the father and brethren behind you. 
Let the dead bury the dead henceforth and forever, so far 
as you are concerned. Abandon all the old stand-points 
of thought, feeling, and sentiment. There are many things 
which we cherish as pleasant memories, or even as sacred 
duties, which it is best to forget and to put away entirely ; for 
the new proprium into which we are being born, will remember 
them no more forever. 

" The Lord, in order to render any one blessed and happy, 
wills a total submission, that is, that he should not be partly 
his own and partly the Lord's ; for there are then two Lords, 
whom a man cannot serve at the same time. (Matt. vi. 24.) 

194 



ADVICE TO A WOUNDED SPIRIT. 1 95 

A total submission is also meant by the Lord's words in Mat- 
thew, ' Whosoever loveth father and mother above me is not 
worthy of me ; and whosoever loveth son and daughter above 
me is not worthy of me.' (x. 37.) By father and mother are 
signified in general those things which are of man's proprium 
from what is hereditary ; and by son and daughter, those things 
which are of man's proprium from what is actual." — A.C. 6138. 

In the next place, dear madam, you rely too much upon 
books and friends for consolation and help. You go to your 
favorite authors for comfort as the drunkard goes to his cups. 
It is a species of spiritual dissipation, for you have already a 
great deal more knowledge than you can utilize. What you 
most need is to find the Christ that is within yourself, and 
bring Him down through your own spiritual structures, so that 
by his influx, He may give peace and joy to your heart and 
light and guidance to your understanding. You have infinite 
resources within your own soul, for all the heavens flow into 
you; and the Lord flows through the heavens into the truths 
of the Word which are stored in your memory, bringing that 
living wisdom which needs no clothing in earthly language. 

"Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils, for 
wherein is he to be accounted of?" 

" Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life." 
" Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall 
never thirst : for the water that I shall give him, shall be in 
him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. ' ' 

Another important thing for you to do, is to recognize the 
terrible fact, announced first by Swedenborg, that we are all 
born in hell (that is, with hereditary proclivities that are al- 
together evil) and are now living in hell, organically bound 
up and woven into its associated forms — from which there is no 



I96 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

escape except through the Lord Jesus Christ ; for no possible 
additions to us of wealth, power, influence, pleasure, etc., etc., 
outside of Jesus Christ, could do anything but confirm and fix 
us in our present evil conditions. Let us learn the truth and 
accept the situation. We are compelled in some shape or 
other to bear the burdens and share the miseries of others, for 
we are all bound up in the same bundle of the infernal life. 
We need no ideal and sentimental elevations into heavenly 
states of thought and feeling, above and away from the troubles 
and trials of the world. To bring forth the atmospheres of 
the Lord into the hells in which we live, is the business of the 
"Christian life. The Lord alone can overcome the world and 
its tribulations. To live and work bravely, patiently, hope- 
fully, with and for the Lord, in our own hereditary and actual 
hells, is the surest road to heaven. 

It is a mistake, dear madam, to suppose that we have fallen 
from higher and happier spiritual places into our present low, 
external conditions, and have a reasonable right to grieve 
about it. It is more probable that we have passed through 
darker and deeper hells, which were mercifully concealed from 
our sight, and have advanced into more hopeful conditions, 
however wretched they may seem to be. Your interior spiritual 
states when you were the petted child of wealth and fashion, 
and all without was lovely and serene, were no doubt far worse 
than they now are, when you have been led by Divine Provi- 
dence through thorny and painful paths of deprivation and 
sorrow, to see the old proprium as it is, to know " the depths 
of Satan," and to feel truly that without the Lord we can do 
nothing. 

But what are we to do about the dear friends and relatives 
who are far astray from the path of duty, and going appar- 



ADVICE TO A WOUNDED SPIRIT. 1 97 

ently to temporal and spiritual destruction ? Cling to them 
with the utmost tenacity, through evil and good report, bear- 
ing all things, hoping all things, forgiving all things. Im- 
patience, says Swedenborg, is an unspiritual state. The Lord 
is infinitely patient. Trust Him for the final welfare of those 
you love. The very evils you deplore in them are perhaps, 
in the Lord's hands, the best experiences for their final de- 
liverance. How vain it is to judge according to appear- 
ances ! We are all led by ways we know not. The Lord is 
often absent from places and states which we have sedulously 
prepared for his glorified presence. And on the contrary He 
is often intimately present where we would never suspect it. 

" If I make my bed in hell, behold / Thou art there : 

" If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me ; even the 

night shall be light about me. 

" Yea I the darkness hideth not from thee; but the flight 

shineih as the day : the darkness and the light are both alike 

to thee" 

What can we do but stand firm, faithful, and hopeful, in the 
discharge of every duty through all sufferings and tribula- 
tions? " In the world, ye shall have tribulation ; but be of 
good cheer, I have overcome the world." Let the sphere of 
the Lord flow through us in our states of self-annihilation, 
his loving kindness, his forbearance, his patience, his humil- 
ity, his goodness ; for these states are always really his and 
not our own. Thus will each of us contribute to break up 
the evil spheres which surround us, and reduce them into 
subjection to the laws of heavenly order. Then will He fill 
our hearts with his own joy, and give us the silent-falling 
manna of his wisdom for our daily thought and conduct. 

How can the angels be near to us in our self-created atmos- 
17* 



I98 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

pheres of doubt, anxiety, thought-for-the-morrow, and rest- 
less desire for earthly things ? They are happy because they 
have given up all — are dead to all — have nothing, want noth- 
ing — and receive all things from moment to moment, directly 
from the divine hand. Let us do likewise. The Lord is 
now present ill ultimates upon this earth, with his holy angels 
— or with angelic states of love and wisdom open to all, at- 
tainable by all ; for verily all things are now possible to them 
that believe. 

Now, my dear madam, these ideas seem to exhaust the sub- 
ject you have presented, so far as the interior life is con- 
cerned. G. W. C. knows nothing and can give no advice 
about external affairs. It would be equivalent to spirit-con- 
trol if he could do so. He says, stand alone with the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and act from the freedom and rationality He 
gives you, and all will be well. " Seek ye first (or supremely) 
the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things 
shall be added unto you. ' ' 

May your heart be so opened to the Lord that your mind 
may be guided into light, and your feet into paths of safety. 

Yours truly, 

W. H. H. 



w» 



LETTER XXIII. 

COERCION IN RELIGIOUS MATTERS. 

DEAR MADAM: — One sentence in your letter 
struck me painfully, and set me to thinking about 
many things. " The cancer of coerciveness," you 
say, " is eating out the life-blood of the church, and all 
things are being paralyzed thereby. " 

It is a sign of your growing sensitiveness to the new life, 
that you have those feelings of suffocation and oppression in 
the atmosphere of the church to which you belong. Those 
members of it who are in harmony with its general spirit, 
would be simply astonished at your sensations and feelings. 
They are easy and happy in it, with no more sense of oppres- 
sion than we have from the enormous weight of the atmos- 
pheric air upon us. The minister is talented and popular, 
preaches the heavenly doctrines with genuine zeal, and per- 
forms his pastoral duties with brotherly affection. The mem- 
bers of the church are cultivated, liberal, excellent people, 
quite distinguished, even in a great city, for their enlight- 
ened and earnest discharge of all their social, civil, and relig- 
ious obligations. Examined from the outside and by the old 
orthodox standards, everything is admirable, lovely, and 
serene. What is the matter ? Is the fault with them ? or is 
it with you? 

The truth of the matter is, you are outgrowing and outliv- 
ing your surroundings. You have become dissatisfied with 

the standard of the spiritual life hitherto recognized and ad- 

199 



200 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

mired. There is too much light and too little heat in the 
sphere about you. You have learned something of the wiles 
of the old proprium — " the depths of Satan' ' — in yourself, 
and you see them in others. The veil of appearances, the 
illusions of society, the pretensions and self-deceptions of 
men and women are painful to you. You are yearning to 
realize the genuine life of heaven in your soul ; to feel the 
Spirit of the Lord breathing upon the dark face of the waters 
within you, and creating new light for your guidance. You 
have seasons of contrition, humiliation, and despair. You 
have new sensibilities at your own shortcomings, new sym- 
pathies, new pities for others, a new willingness for burdens 
and self-sacrifices, and a deep feeling of shame when you 
shrink from them in the least. The Lord is coming to you 
personally by interior ways, and would manifest Himself 
through you. 

Now when you broach these experiences and the new and 
broader intellectual views which flow from them, to your be- 
loved pastor and to the leading members and friends in your 
Church, you meet with no sympathetic response. They do 
not wish or approve new experiences, innovations, expansions, 
unfoldings of any kind. They prefer the old way and its 
fixed and closed conditions. A good, moral life illuminated 
brilliantly with spiritual truths, is their beau ideal of the 
Christian state. Some of them doubt your experiences and 
question your opinions ; some declare them to be visionary 
and fantastic ; others solemnly warn you against hallucinations 
and enthusiastic spirits. Your best friends strongly dissuade 
you from reading certain books or subscribing to certain jour- 
nals and papers. Some are even angry with you for doing 
so. Your pastor perhaps tells you gently that it is not well 



COERCION IN RELIGIOUS MATTERS. 201 

for the laity to encourage too much independence of thought, 
and that it would be humblest and best to defer, in all spir- 
itual matters, to the superior knowledge and authority of the 
clergy. 

Religious wars have been noted for cruelty ; religious dis- 
sensions for bitterness ; and the mildest discussion about re- 
ligious matters rarely terminates without a disagreeable reve- 
lation of the old proprium on both sides. And these things 
are perfectly natural : for the religious element — a man's con- 
ception of God and the neighbor and his duties toward them, 
is the strongest, deepest element in his nature. Every man 
seems to himself to stand upon ground where surrender or 
compromise is impossible. When one's faith is assaulted, 
not only are his self-love and his pride of opinion wounded, 
but really believing that the welfare, peace, and order of so- 
ciety are endangered by his opponent's doctrines, he justifies 
his indifference, contemptuousness, and animosity in the most 
earnest and adroit manner, thinking he would do God service 
in the destruction of his enemies. Such men really in spirit 
call down fire from heaven to overwhelm those who differ in 
opinion. The new has pretty well displaced the old pro- 
prium, when a man can utter his own opinions gently and 
sweetly, listening to others freely, patiently, and charitably, 
trembling in heart lest he should do them injustice, and re- 
turning always to wrathful utterances " that soft answer that 
turneth away wrath. ' ' 

The old proprium has an imperishable love of its own opin- 
ions ; thinks they are exactly right and just; wishes every 
body to accept them ; justifies them in the most zealous man- 
ner ; and in proportion as self-love prevails, desires to impose 
them upon all the world. It is self-assertive, aggressive, and 



202 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS, 

coercive in all but a physical sense. " The proprium of one 
man in a religious society/ ' says a thoughtful writer, " often 
causes such irritation and antagonism, that the sphere of love 
and unity is destroyed/ ' This sphere of coercion which we 
so often see in the individual, is intensified in the aggregate 
body according to the numbers, intelligence, and influence 
of the members. The church-sphere is, therefore, more coer- 
cive than the individual sphere, as the corporation is more 
heartless and soulless than the constituent directors. Its ten- 
dency is to restrain and constrain, to crystallize into fixed 
forms, to discourage progress, to infringe upon, paralyze, and 
finally destroy individual liberty. And all this it does in the 
name of charity and good-will, in the sweetest, softest, most 
graceful manner, pleading in its justification its inextinguish- 
able loyalty to truth. 

This sphere of authority in the individual or in the church 
is well described by Swedenborg as he saw it in the world of 
spirits. 

" There was a certain spirit, who, during his life in the 
body, seemed to himself to be great and wise in comparison 
with others. In other respects he was well-disposed, and not 
particularly given to despise others in comparison with him- 
self; but being of high birth, he had contracted a sphere of 
pre-eminence and authority. This spirit came to me, and for 
a long time said nothing ; but I perceived that he was encom- 
passed about as it were with a mist, which proceeding from 
him began to overspread the associate spirits ; at which they 
began to feel distressed. Upon this they spoke with me and 
said that they could not on any account bear his approach, 
because they felt thernselves deprived of their liberty, and as 
if they did not dare even to open their lips to speak. He 
also began to discourse; and entered into conversation with 



COERCION IN RELIGIOUS MATTERS. 203 

them, calling them his sons and at times instructing them, 
but in the spirit of authority which he had contracted. 
Hence may appear what is the nature and quality of the 
sphere of authority in the other life." — A. C. 1507. 

Swedenborg repeatedly declares that the secret and holy 
processes of regeneration cannot go on except in states of 
absolute liberty of will, thought, and action. It would be 
well for ministers and church members to remember this, when 
they are endeavoring to coerce everybody into their special 
forms and limits of thought. We should always leave others 
in perfect freedom. Madam Guyon, whose remarkable expe- 
riences are only explicable in the light of New-Church doc- 
trine, has the following judicious remarks on this subject : 

" As to those directors who appropriate souls to themselves; 
who would fain conduct them in their own way, and not in 
God's way ; who would put limits to his graces, and fix bar- 
riers to hinder them from advancing — as for those directors, 
I say, who know but one way, and who would fain make all 
the world walk in it, the mischief they do to souls is beyond 
remedy, because they keep them fixed all their lives to certain 
things which prevent God from communicating Himself to 
them without bounds. What an account will they not have 
to render for these souls ! ' ' 

When men, professing to be Christians, have no spirit of 
loving accommodation, such as the Lord always exhibits, to 
real or supposed falsities, but insist with inflexible will upon 
imposing their opinions and rules of conduct upon others, 
there is always an unsubdued proprium at the bottom, hard, 
cold, selfish, tyrannical ; and the spirit of the Inquisition is 
really concealed underneath the profitable suavities of modern 
life. When several such men dominate a church, it becomes 



204 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

a prison to the soul, where all are virtually slaves, and each is 
a spy on the others. Free and sensitive spirits suffocate in 
its atmosphere, where progress is impossible, and the truly 
spiritual life can never be developed. The souls who escape 
its bondage only by death, enter in the world of spirits upon 
painful experiences, that are necessary to break up the fixed 
and false conditions which had been imposed upon them by 
ecclesiastical authority. 

The sphere of every being or association of beings always 
imposes some sense of restraint or limitation upon us, however 
small or faint it may be. The Lord alone leaves man in abso- 
lute liberty, exacts nothing of him, imposes nothing upon him, 
and is always precisely the same to him, no matter what use he 
makes of his freedom. Just in proportion as we have the Lord 
in us, will we act toward our neighbor in a similar manner. 

It is clearly our duty as New-Church Christians, never to 
coerce and never to permit ourselves to be coerced in religious 
matters ; to demand and to grant the largest liberty of thought 
and action ; and to permit no possible deviations from our 
own standards to diminish our love for the neighbor or our 
labors for his welfare. There is no righteous compulsion save 
of a man's self. Recognizing the uses of just and wise authority 
in parents and teachers, in state and church, we know also 
their temporary character; and that the judgments of the 
spiritual world, beginning often in this, are for the purpose of 
dissociating us from our present imperfect, false, or accidental 
combinations and alliances, and re-associating us upon heavenly 
principles in the body of the Divine Man, in whose service 
only there is perfect freedom. 

Yours in the truth that makes us free, 

W. H. H. 



LETTER XXIV. 

CONVICTION OF SIN, INFIDEL DOUBTS, THE TWO 
PROPRIUMS. 



M 



"Y DEAR SIR: — Your two long letters have been re- 
ceived and duly considered. Your case is common 
enough, and still it has something about it very rare. 
It is common, because there are thousands, perhaps millions 
of people at this moment in the world, who are undergoing 
similar experiences. It is rare, because not one in a thousand 
has, like you, the courage of his convictions, and openly de- 
nounces himself for what he inwardly feels himself to be — a 
thief, a murderer, a drunkard, an adulterer, an unmitigated 
and irredeemable sinner from centre to circumference. 

You speak the language of the good in the world of spirits, 
when they are putting off their externals and entering into 
vastation and judgment in their course of preparation for 
heaven. The fact is, the sphere of judgment has struck you ! 
— the heavens are opening in you, and their light shows you. 
the old proprium exactly as it is. The same thing occurred 
to myself, and in reading your letters I am treading familiar 
ground. You give me permission to publish anything you 
have written. I make some extracts for the benefit of all who 
are now entering, or will before long enter, that descending 
sphere from heaven which brings with it conviction of sin, and 
leads to the humiliation and death of the old man with all 
his lusts, 

Think of a man seventy years old, who began preaching 
1 8 205 



206 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

the gospel of Jesus Christ more thah forty years ago, who 
stands well with his friends and neighbors, having answered 
all the social and ecclesiastical demands of the age — think 
of him throwing off the triple cloak in which we all conceal 
ourselves, and exposing himself in the following manner ! 

"Whilst I have had many seasons of joy and peace, which 
I would not exchange for the whole world, my life has been 
almost one continued scene of melancholy, caused by the 
almost constant reign in me of every sin ; and my troubles 
have so much increased of late, as almost to run me deranged. 

" I believe I have been the greatest sinner that ever lived. 
You say to me, 'Thou shalt not covet.' I answer, you had 
as well say to me that I must not be hungry. You say, 
' Thou shalt not commit adultery. ' I answer, that if we ac- 
cept Christ's definition of adultery, you had as well tell me 
that I must never be thirsty. 

. "I have never seen myself so vile a sinner in my life 
before, as I do at present. I see that I have never done a 
good thing. I have performed the duties of life somewhat 
like other folks, but everything was done from selfish mo- 
tives. Indeed I do not believe I ever performed a single act 
in my life, that was not in some way contaminated with sin. 
My very best prayers need forgiveness, my best sermons need 
praying for, my tears need washing. 

"Yes, my condition is a thousand times worse than ever. 
Pen cannot describe it, nor tongue tell it ! There surely can 
be no worse hell than that I now feel ! The whole town of 
' Mansoul ' is full of devils ! God has hardened my heart as 
He did Pharaoh's, and he has deserted me as he did Saul." 

Now, my dear sir, all this is but the wail of a "wounded 
and contrite spirit." Swedenborg says that when heaven is 
opened to man, "he is liable to be tormented with remorse 
of conscience even unto death." (S. D. 1959.) The Lord 



CONVICTION OF SIN. 2C>7 

in divine mercy regulates this influx from the heavens, so that 
we shall suffer no more than we can bear. When a man is 
brought sensationally face to face, as it were, with the hells 
within him, he cannot help feeling himself to be a perfect 
devil ; and it is only his own finite perceptions which give 
any limit to the infernal influx which pervades him. He is 
ready to accuse himself of everything and to acknowledge 
any depth of infamy. Even St. Paul thought himself the 
" chief of sinners.' ' My friend G. W. C. frequently says 
that, when he stands in the old proprium, he can imagine the 
salvation of the whole human race except himself. How the 
Lord can save him, is beyond his comprehension. When I 
see and feel the hells within myself, as I sometimes do, I can 
do nothing but fly in terror to the Lord, beseeching Him to 
withhold me from the commission of the most dreadful sins. 

Now these spiritual experiences should give us no concern. 
They should indeed be regarded with a kind of rational satis- 
faction. They prove that we are in a salvable condition — 
that the work of regeneration is going on favorably under 
Divine guidance. The man who has never experienced these 
things, has never sounded "the depths of Satan" nor known 
the secret power of the Lord. He will have to find out here- 
after what it has been our happy privilege to discover here. 
Nor need we be in the least surprised if, as we grow older 
and the work in us becomes deeper and more thorough, we 
are led into fiercer temptations and darker hours than ever 
before. This is all right and according to divine laws. The 
highest heavens antagonize the deepest hells, and we are 
opened first into one and then into the other. It was so with 
our Lord. The temptations of the Devil in the wilderness 
and of the Pharisees in the temple, were slight in comparison 



208 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

with the later temptations in the Garden and upon the Cross. 
What right have we to expect any better things for ourselves? 
Did He not say to all of us through Peter : " Follow thou 
me"? 

You have been reading Madam Guyon, and you find many 
things in her terrible experiences so fully accordant with your 
own ! It is a good sign that the celestial degree of life is 
being opened within you, and that you will soon be one of 
the babes of the Lord's celestial church which is now unfold- 
ing in the world. "Fear not, little flock : for it is your Fa- 
ther' s good pleasure to give you the kingdom" 

But you are greatly astonished at a sentence from Sweden- 
borg, which you find in the notes appended by Mr. Ford 
to his edition of the "Spiritual Torrents.' ' It contains a 
truth of transcendent importance, repeated several times by 
Swedenborg in his writings, and one that may be almost 
called the doctrinal Key-stone in the arch of regeneration. 
It is this: "If man believed, as is the truth, that all good 
and truth are from the Lord, and all evil and falsity from 
hell, he would not appropriate good to himself and make it 
meritorious ; nor would he appropriate evil to himself, and 
make himself guilty of it." (D. P. 320.) Treasure that 
thought, my dear sir, and all the other extracts from Sweden- 
borg in your copy of Guyon, and you will come gradually 
into great, abiding, and consoling spiritual light. 

You present me some pages of infidel doubts which arise in 
your mind. They are such as you find in the writings of Vol- 
taire, Tom Paine, and Ingersoll. They are not worth answer- 
ing. When you are in the new proprium and feel the Lord 
in you, they totally disappear. You smile at their absurdities. 
When you fall back into your old proprium, they need not 



CONVICTION OF SIN. 20Q 

trouble you if you will reflect that they are not your own doubts, 
but those of evil spirits who are near you, and who accuse you 
day and night of their own evil states. You will answer them 
to your entire satisfaction by simply getting rid of the evil 
spirits who cause them. 

But how to get rid of them ? By constantly and boldly af- 
firming that the Lord Jesus Christ is our only God and Saviour, 
from whom all good and truth proceed, and who alone is the 
Giver of life, light, liberty, rationality, joy, and peace. By 
abstaining from all evils as sins against Him. By repudiating 
all evil things as suggestions from the hells, and refusing all 
responsibility for their appearance. Wait patiently on the 
Lord until He sees fit to remove the temptation. Accuse your- 
self of nothing ; but face your accusers, speak to them as you 
would to persons in the flesh (they will perceive all your mental 
movements), and pray for them with an earnest, brotherly love. 
Evil spirits cannot abide the combined spheres of compassion, 
humiliation, and prayer. 

Your experiences, however, are not all one-sided. No man's 
can be. You have states of peace and joy, little sabbaths of 
the soul, little foretastes of heaven. The new proprium is a 
new life from the Lord in us. You know a little of it now : 
you will live in it almost altogether hereafter. The old pro- 
prium adheres to us so long as we exist on the natural plane 
of life. Our states will therefore alternate. We will have 
day and night ; summer and winter ; heaven and hell ; and 
happy are we when we feel that the Lord is present and gov- 
erns in them all. 

G. W. C. read your letter, and declares that you have sub- 
ject for great rejoicing ; that your states of conviction, hu- 
miliation, and despair, are hopeful signs of the new life dawn- 
18* O 



2IO LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

ing in you. Oh, that all the dead Christians in all our churches 
could thus hear the voice of the Son of God, and begin to 
live ! Fear nothing, my dear brother ! Turn away from the 
hells. Live and feed among the Psalms and the Evangelists 
and the book of Revelation. 

Yours truly, 

W. H. H. 



LETTER XXV. 

CONFIRMED IN FALSE DOCTRINES: BROUGHT INTO 
JUDGMENT. 



M 



Y DEAR SIR: — Your case is a very difficult one to 
deal with, very obscure and very distressing. Look at 
the spirit of your last letter ! 



"I have been waiting for the relief you so fondly hoped I 
would soon obtain. But my trouble is greater than ever. 
Sometimes I hope that day is breaking : but alas ! alas ! those 
moments of hope are soon dashed. My sins are strong and 
lively : my graces, if I have any, are weakly and soon tram- 
pled in the mire by the foe ! The devil is triumphant ! 

" I deserve all that I feel. I do not believe that mine is a 
case of ' temptation/ as you suppose. I fear that God has 
given me up to vile affections — has given me over to a repro- 
bate mind. I fear that the wrath of God is revealed from 
heaven against me. (Romans i.) Knowing God, I have not 
glorified Him as God, nor am I thankful. I have thought 
myself wise, and have become a fool. God has given me up 
in the lusts of my heart to uncleanness. I fear that my case 
is that spoken of by Jude — ' Who were before of old ordained 
to this condemnation. ' 

"Oh! is there any worse hell than this! Me miserum ! 
Pray for me, ' oh, wretched man that I am ' ! Yours in the 
jaws of black despair ! " 

Who can believe that these extracts are the words of a good 
and intelligent man, who has preached what he thought was 
the gospel of Jesus Christ for forty years? The scientist 

211 



212 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

would say, this is a case of religious melancholy, dependent 
on physical causes. We who believe that all physical phe- 
nomena are the effects of spiritual causes, refuse to accept any 
but a spiritual solution of the difficulty. The solution we offer 
is this: Here is a man who is confirmed in false doctrines, and 
has been brought into judgment by changes of spiritual states 
going on in the interior (of which he is unconscious), but 
which have let in the light of heaven upon the old proprium, 
and revealed the inadequacy of the orthodox scheme of sal- 
vation. 

Now, excuse me, my dear friend, if I tell you that you have 
been engaged for a great while in preaching to the people a 
vast system of false doctrine as divine truth ; and in proportion 
to your own faith and religious zeal, apparently so commend- 
able, has been your fatal confirmation in the false doctrines 
you preached. Among these falsities of faith, are the assertions 
that God is a being of infinite justice who makes certain right- 
eous demands of his creatures, and visits them with eternal 
wrath if they disobey. Moreover, that He actually foreordains 
certain of them to everlasting condemnation, hardens his heart 
against them, and consigns them implacably to perdition. 
And now that you are nearing the spirit-world and are loosen- 
ing your hold upon earthly things, these hideous perversions 
of truth come home to roost upon your own head, and darken 
your soul with secret terrors and unconcealed despair. 

Now let me ask you here : Why are you not supported and 
comforted by the great "scheme of salvation" which you 
have so often and so eloquently presented to the despairing 
sinner? Is his arm shortened that it cannot save? How can 
you dare distrust the infinite atonement of Christ, or the re- 
iterated promises of his Word ? Why do you not lay hold 



CONFIRMED IN FALSE DOCTRINES. 213 

upon his cross, claim your share in the satisfaction rendered 
by his blood, experience the pardon of the Father, and rise up 
made whole and happy with the sanctifying benediction of the 
Holy Ghost ? Alas ! my poor friend ! because these are also 
delusions of the imagination, bound up with many others in 
the orthodox bundle of falsities. They are worse than useless 
to you \ rotten staffs that break under your weight ; broken 
cisterns that hold no water. 

You will hardly believe me, but I assure you that it is true, 
that all the good, worthy, Christian people in all the orthodox 
churches, will have to undergo experiences more or less similar 
to your own before they are divested of their old theological 
delusions and enabled to receive the genuine light of heaven. 
You are having a slight foretaste in this world of what they 
all experience after death. When they find in the spiritual 
world no such a God, no such a Christ, no such a heaven, no 
such saints, no such rewards and punishments, indeed no such 
general or special conditions as they expected to find, they feel 
as if their Lord was taken from them and they were left in 
states of mental darkness and despair. 

It is exceedingly difficult to eradicate these false principles 
from the mind after death ; and many spirits linger for years 
out of heaven in the world of spirits near the earth, contend- 
ing for the old doctrines of trinity, atonement, faith alone, 
foreordination, reprobation, etc., etc., resisting the gentle 
efforts of angels and good spirits to enlighten and instruct 
them. It is well for a man, as for yourself, that his judgment 
begins in this world, that his false idols are taken away from 
him, and his old states and conditions of affection and thought 
are being broken up, however painful may be the process. 
The doubts and unbelief, the secret misgivings and despairs 



214 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

that are now assailing thousands of souls in the Christian 
churches, are glorious signs of an approaching crisis which 
will lead us all into a new and better and higher life. 

" And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you 
free." — John viii. 32. 

There lies your hope, my dear sir, and the hope of all men 
— to know the truth, and to be delivered by the truth from 
•the bondage and slavery of error. The truth is, that no God 
has ever been revealed to us but the Lord Jesus Christ (John 
i. 18) ; that He is a Being of infinite mercy, who has foreor- 
dained all to heaven and none to hell ; who condemns no one, 
punishes no one, forsakes no one ; who forgives everything 
even without being asked ; and who, instead of giving you up 
to your blindness and hardness of heart, pursues you even into 
hell with his tender mercies, and his reproachful entreaties, 
"Ye will not come unto me, that ye might have life." If 
you had possessed this true knowledge of the Lord, and built 
your faith upon it, you would never have fallen into the hor- 
rible pit which the enemy laid for your soul. 

Other truths also, coherent parts of a vast system of truth, 
would enlighten your eyes as to your present condition. I 
said in a previous letter which was addressed to you, that the 
light of heaven had been let into the interiors of your soul, 
and discovered to you the real nature of the old proprium. 
But you entertain very false ideas of the changes to be 
effected in that old proprium or selfhood. You have per- 
suaded yourself and taught it to others, that this old propri- 
um — the old man of Paul is to be washed clean and made 
whole, to be reformed and transformed into a "new crea- 
ture/ ' so that from having been evil and false it becomes 



CONFIRMED IN FALSE DOCTRINES. 215 

thoroughly good and true. This is a great error. The car- 
nal mind is at eternal enmity with the spiritual mind. It is 
never reformed or transformed, but it must be suppressed and 
subdued, and finally repudiated and put off so far as can be : 
but it never can be totally removed, even from the angels of 
heaven, who are always just as ready as you to cry out of 
themselves " unclean ! unclean 1 M 

But the angels do not distress themselves about this old 
proprium, as you do. They know that the proprium is evil : 
they hate it and pray the Lord to withhold them from it. 
The devils live in it and love it, and, whenever they get a 
chance, accuse you of doing so too. You are really in hell ; 
for the interior hell of your proprium has been opened, and 
your attendant evil spirits accuse you of every imaginable 
depth of sin and infamy. What shall you do about it ? Ac- 
knowledge it all — confess yourself capable of every evil thing 
they lay to your charge. Own that you are not good, and 
never expect to be good, and clinch it firmly by declaring 
in the words of the Master, " there is none good but God." 
Turn your back on the old proprium and all the horrible, 
disgusting evil spirits who obsess you through it. Turn to 
the Lord Jesus Christ simply by shunning all evil things be- 
cause they are sins against Him ; and He will give you a new 
life — discreted from his own flesh and blood, which never did 
sin and never can sin — in which life the angels stand above 
their old proprium in peace and glory forever. 

There is no living man, however good and pure and holy, 
who would not think and feel just as you do, if his interior 
perceptions were opened as yours have been : for what is true 
of you is true of all men. O, poor human nature! " paint 
an inch thick : to this complexion must you come at last ' ' ! 



2l6 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

You may remain long in the darkness ; you may suffer a great 
deal ; but the Lord leads you by ways we know not, and the 
end is certain. You will hear the voice of the Son of God, 
and yon will arise from the grave in which you are now so 
deeply buried : and then you will remember his precious 
words — 

" Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you : not as 
the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be trou- 
bled, neither let it be afraid. ' ' 

Yours fraternally, 

W. H. H. 



M 



LETTER XXVI. 

UNFOLDING OF INTERIOR STATES. 

' Y DEAR FRIEND :— What a strange and painful reve- 
lation you have made to me of your spiritual condition ! 
How my heart aches over it ! I understand it, how- 
ever, a great deal better than you do ; for you are bewildered 
and unhappy, and do not seem to comprehend your experi- 
ences at all. I pray the Lord that I may be enabled to write 
something which will satisfy your mind and console and 
strengthen your heart. 

When I first knew you, thirty years ago, you were a young 
man of fine promise, as the world says : a man with a calm, 
luminous, happy face ; sweet-tempered and gentle in your 
manners as a woman, industrious of habit and studious of the 
truth ; a man exceptionally good and pure, who thought with 
Swedenborg that it was not at all a difficult thing to live the 
religious life. The world was bright, heaven was near, and 
the future unclouded — as they all ought to be to a lovable 
man whom every one was obliged to love. 

You were just in that transition state between the innocence 

and inexperience of youth and early manhood, and the time 

when the selfhood develops rapidly, and hereditary evil stirs 

itself and grapples with a man in a life or death struggle. 

You entered afterwards into the labors, troubles, trials, and 

dangers of the world. You seemed to bear yourself manfully 

in the fight. You had, no doubt, the usual combats with the 

world, the flesh, and the devil ; but you appeared to others at 
19 217 



2l8 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

least to come out victorious over all. You were zealous in 
the performance of every duty, social and religious ; an active 
churchman, a model citizen and neighbor, an irreproachable 
husband and father. 

Now you assure me that your way is covered with darkness, 
and the light has gone out of your life. Your face is worn 
and furrowed with the deep lines of vexation and care. It is 
with great difficulty that you conceal an aching heart and a 
soured spirit beneath the necessary external suavities of life. 
You confess that your hopes have been blighted, your am- 
bitions thwarted ; that your faith is profoundly shaken, and 
your soul is sorrowful even unto death. Your troubles are 
such burdens upon you, that the heavens seem closed, the 
Lord entirely absent, light and peace far away, and in your 
despairs you have even cast your eyes longingly toward the 
suicide's grave. 

Now you know very well from doctrine, that these states of 
mind are caused by evil spirits who attach themselves to you 
through the medium of your own hereditary evils, for which 
you are not responsible, and endeavor to ultimate their lives 
in the world. You know also that if you resist and repudiate 
their suggestions, you will be finally delivered from the infes- 
tations and remanded into that new proprium which has 
been preparing for you from your birth, which stood out so 
near the surface thirty years ago, and which the Lord has 
withdrawn from your perceptions, to save it from profana- 
tion, but which He keeps in reserve for your future use and 
delight. 

These unfoldings of our interior states are revelations to us 
of the evils which lie concealed within us. Although always 
painful and distressing, they are exceedingly useful and even 



UNFOLDING OF INTERIOR STATES. - 219 

beneficent. They give us self-knowledge — that immense 
blessing — and they bring the truths we have stored in the 
memory into active combat against the hells we have discov- 
ered, and so by degrees implant those truths in our life and 
will. This is the office of truth. Truth is the book which 
the angel gave John to eat. In the mouth it was " sweet as 
honey/ ' for we delight to gather and taste of knowledge. 
But when swallowed, it was "very bitter; " and so are truths 
when we begin to absorb, digest, and assimilate them to our 
spiritual being. 

It seems singular that one so well instructed in the heav- 
enly doctrines, and who has led such a moral and orderly 
life, should not be able to keep his spiritual vision clear, and 
his heart serene and peaceful, when the cares and anxieties of 
the external life crowd upon him. You know that outside of 
their spiritual uses, all these things are ephemeral and insig- 
nificant, not worth a sigh or a tear. Our sorrows and trou- 
bles are almost always the lamentations of the old proprium 
over the destruction of its hopes or the curtailments of its 
delights. Happy are we when we ask nothing of the old pro- 
prium but what Diogenes asked of Alexander — to stand out 
of our light and give us the sun. The Divine Sun cannot 
shine upon us until the proprium is removed. 

Your unhappiness and despair are good signs that truth is 
living and active in behalf of your soul. When truth is de- 
feated and the good angels leave us, we cease to struggle ; the 
old proprium becomes quiet and happy ; we sink into states 
of indifference or repose ; the evil nature triumphs, and finding 
no opposition to its will, is satisfied for a while. The seven 
spirits worse than the first, enter the secret chambers of the 
heart and hold high carnival over the ruins of the spiritual 



220 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

life. The happiness of that hell would be immeasurably worse 
for you than all the miseries you now endure. 

Thinking earnestly of your case, and especially of the ap- 
parent powerlessness of all your spiritual truths to aid you in 
trouble, even after a good life of thirty, I may say, fifty years, 
I seem to myself to discover the root of the evil in a single 
fact. You have relied too much all your life upon truth alone. 
You have not sufficiently looked to the Lord as our Father in 
heaven. You have attempted to make Jesus a King, and He 
has withdrawn from you as He did from the disciples, and 
concealed Himself in the mountain of his divine love. The 
consequence is, that you have gone down upon the sea of the 
natural life, guided only by general laws and principles, which 
you think sufficient because they are his laws and stand in his 
place, but without his personal presence in your ship. Of 
course the inevitable storm has arisen, the winds are contrary 
and boisterous, you are tossed about in the darkness, and 
fearful, bewildered, and wretched, you know not what to do. 

Now, my dear friend, I say to you boldly, look up with 
hope and faith. The same Jesus who ascended to the moun- 
tain of the divine love and became one with the Father, has 
descended into the very ultimates of our life as the Divine 
Man, and He has come to bring us into personal, individual 
rapport with his divine-human principle ; to still the raging 
winds and waters, to deliver us from the infestations of evil 
spirits, and to bring us at once (" and immediately the ship 
was at the land") into the peace and joy of his heavenly 
kingdom. 

Trained as you have been in the external New Church, you 
will probably cry aloud at this doctrine of the personal ap- 
pearance of the Divine Man in the ultimates of nature, and 



UNFOLDING OF INTERIOR STATES. 221 

attribute the phenomena to spiritualism, or spiritism, or magic. 
But if you will exclude all other sounds and listen attentively 
with the ear of the heart, you will hear the voice of the Lord, 
proclaiming, "It is I." 

The cure of your disease — for it is a state of mental and 
spiritual disease — is to be found in direct communication with 
the Divine hand or power by means of faith and prayer. It 
is the sphere of the Divine love which comes to help you. 
Evil spirits care nothing for your truths, but combat them 
with the utmost ferocity ; but they flee from the presence of 
the Divine love, for it torments them like fire. An infant, 
says Swedenborg, can put thousands of devils to flight. Re- 
pose, as a little child again, upon the divine-human bosom 
of the Lord, and you will find eternal protection. 

The faith to be exerted is the simple, hearty, childlike 
trust in the Divine Word ; the prayer to be offered is an 
earnest desire for perfect acquiescence and cooperation with 
the Divine will. Prayer to be delivered from our painful con- 
ditions is mere external supplication. Spiritual prayer is, 
that we may be enabled to bring down the Divine life and to 
do the Divine will in whatever conditions his providence has 
prepared for the development of our spiritual nature. Seek 
thus, my dear friend, the " heavenly places M near the Lord, 
with the Lord, and in the Lord. 

The practical nature of this advice will be more clearly 
seen, when you remember that this is the way for the internal 
to govern the external. " Seek ye first (that is, as the thing 
of supreme moment) the kingdom of God and his righteous- 
ness, and all these things shall be added unto you." Obtain 
peace at the centres, and it will work its way into the cir- 
cumferences. The Divine will passing into our wills, moves 
19* 



222 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

downwards and outwards, and readjust all external relations 

in harmony with spiritual requirements. It gives us a new 

and silent power to break idols, to change habits, to pacify 

enemies, to attach friends, to control and transact business, 

and it gradually extends and deepens, through constant faith 

and prayer, until we know and feel the presence of the Lord 

in all the circumstances and transactions of life. This is the 

Second Coming of the Lord to the individual soul, which He 

is now ready to make to an extent never realized in the 

world before, to all who hear his voice and open the door of 

the heart to his entrance. So may it be with you ! 

Yours truly, 

W. H. H. 



LETTER XXVII. 

FREEDOM OF THOUGHT, ETC. HOW IS THE LORD 
NEARER TO US? REMNANTS OF THE MOST ANCIENT 
CHURCH 



M 



Y DEAR SIR:— My letters and published articles in- 
terest but puzzle and almost annoy you ; as well they 
may any one who thinks the New Church is already 
born into the world, and only needs a thorough education in 
the Science of Correspondences to enable it to absorb and 
supersede all ecclesiastical institutions existing. That ex- 
treme position, however, is scarcely yours; and so I persist 
in entertaining some hopes of you. May they be speedily 
realized ! 

" Many questions arise/ ' you say, "and many thoughts 
are suggested ; but it has seemed better to be silent, to wait, 
to ponder and think ; to come out from personal spheres, 
much as I may enjoy them, and look at these things in the 
calm light of Swedenborg," etc. 

All this sounds very well; but remember Swedenborg's 
statement, that he who continues to debate whether a thing 
be so or not, never crosses the threshold of genuine knowl- 
edge, but propounds questions and raises objections forever 
and ever, without ever arriving at any rational conclusion. 

Also, my friend, do not delude yourself with the idea that 

your powers of thought and judgment will be improved by 

withdrawing from personal spheres into the calm light of 

Swedenborg, when perhaps you have only evaded my personal 

223 



224 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

spheres to live peaceably and happily in other more congenial 
personal spheres — not in the calm light of Swedenborg, but 
in a light from Swedenborg which has been refracted by pass- 
ing through other assertive but incompetent minds. 

It requires thorough and unflinching self-analysis to enable 
one to realize the defects of mind and character which pre- 
vent him from discovering the truth, or from recognizing it 
after it has been discovered by others. The prime essential 
is freed ova— freedom of thought — a state of mind sometimes 
utterly unknown to those who boast the most loudly of its 
possession. The most pitiable slave to his passions sometimes 
thinks himself perfectly free ! We are all pressed upon and 
more or less imprisoned by atmospheres, personal, social, and 
institutional, of whose mastery over us, we are as little con- 
scious as we are of the superincumbent weight of the air. In 
such states truth cannot be discovered or recognized, unless 
the general sphere in which we are immersed consents to it 
and acknowledges it. There is no hope for us until we de- 
tach ourselves from all surrounding spheres, and stand alone. 
This process is effected in the world of spirits after death, so 
that the spirit can choose its own fixed conditions, utterly 
uninfluenced by others. Such detachment is the greatest 
move we can make in this life toward progress. Nor do we 
lose anything by it ; for as Emerson says, " the detached man 
is the universally associated man;" but just in proportion as 
we break the bondage of personalisms and localisms, do we 
rise into the atmosphere of clear vision, true liberty, and uni- 
versal charity. Think on these things. 

Let us study, not only for your instruction and behoof, but 
for my own and for the instruction and behoof of all our 
friends, this wonderful picture of ourselves, drawn by the in- 
imitable Carlyle. 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT, ETC. 225 

" An immortal nature, with faculties and destiny extend- 
ing through Eternity, hampered and bandaged up by nurses, 
by pedagogues, posture-masters, and the tongues of innumer- 
able old women (named ' force of public opinion '), by pre- 
judice, custom, want of knowledge, want of money, want of 
strength, into, say, .the meagre Pattern-Figure, that in these 
days meets you in all thoroughfares ; a ' god-created ' Man, 
all but abnegating the character of Man ; forced to exist, au- 
tomatized, mummy-wise (scarcely in rare moments audible or 
visible from amid his wrappages or cerements), as Gentleman 
or Gigman, and so selling his birthright of Eternity for the 
three daily meals, poor at best, which Time yields.' * 

" Of all blinds that shut up men's vision, the worst is Self. 
How doubly true, if Self, assuming her cunningest yet miser- 
ablest disguise, come on us, in never-ceasing, all-obscuring 
reflexes from the innumerable Selves of others ; not even as 
Pride, not even as real Hunger, but only as Vanity, and the 
shadow of an imaginary Hunger for Applause, under the name 
of what we call Respectability ! Alas ! now for our Histo- 
rian. Instead of looking fixedly at the Thing, and first of all 
and beyond all endeavoring to see it, and fashion a living 
Picture of it, he has now quite other matters to look to. The 
Thing lies shrouded, invisible, in thousand-fold hallucina- 
tions, and foreign air-images. What did the Whigs say of 
it? What did the Tories? The Priests? The Free-think- 
ers ? Above all, what will my own listening circle say of me 
for what I say of it ? " 

Is it not plain to you that Carlyle here unfolds almost all of 
the real causes why the intellectual and religious world is un- 
able to receive the revelations and doctrines of Swedenborg ? 
It explains also why the majority of the receivers of Sweden- 
borg, invested still in the wrappages of ecclesiasticism, refuse 
to see anything between the lines of his writings, or to permit 



226 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

any extension of his principles, but cling with Jewish subservi- 
ence and tenacity to the jots and tittles of the letter. 

Enough of this strain. Let me now, from what little light 
has been given me, try to answer your questions. 

You ask me what was really accomplished by the Lord's 
Glorification, and in what sense is He nearer to us now than 
before his incarnation. You confess that, although you have 
long preached the "central doctrine" of the New Church, 
its full meaning has somehow or other always eluded your 
grasp. You probably understand it quite as well as other 
people, for the problem itself is so vast that it can never be 
included in the mental field of vision of any finite creature. 
Yet one person, on account of organic conditions, may get a 
better glimpse of it than another, and thus a comparison of 
opinions and conceptions may lead to useful results. 

The Lord is omnipresent and therefore immanent always in 
all men. He never ascends or descends relatively to Him- 
self, for He never changes. But He seems to us to ascend or 
descend, to appear or disappear, according to our changing 
states of reception or exclusion of his divine influx. Nothing 
excludes Him but the human proprium and the hells which 
flow into it. Could these be totally eliminated, God would 
be manifest through all organic forms in the universe just as 
He was manifested in the person of Jesus Christ. But evil 
cannot be annihilated, and the proprium remains always with 
us, differentiating us from God. Therefore his manifestations, 
his appearings and disappearings must always be determined 
by our own varying organic conditions. 

How shall we find the Christ within us, who is ever pressing 
downward for a more perfect manifestation through us? By 
finding the Satan within us who obstructs his descent, and 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT, ETC. 227 

casting him out by abstaining from all evils as sins against the 
Lord. Satan being thus removed, the Christ within stands 
forth manifested in us, according to our organic receptivities, 
without the least effort of our own. Indeed the least effort of 
our own proprium will cause Him to disappear again. 

Now at the time of the Incarnation, or the manifestation 
of God in the flesh, the whole human race was sinking under 
the power and bondage of the hells which occupied the world 
of spirits and invaded even the heavens. Rationality, liberty, 
religion, were all about to perish. Man was about to be cut 
off forever from his interior connection with the heavens, the 
Church, and the Word. " I looked/ ' said the prophet, " and 
lo ! there was no man." Such was the general and individual 
state of man before the glorification of our Lord. How changed 
now! 

The divine love flowing through the heavens, culminated 
in a new and discrete creation — a new Adam — a natural man 
only from the maternal side ; the Lord himself being the pa- 
ternal force within. Thus evading the hereditary evil pro- 
prium from the father, through which the divine life could no 
longer be manifested, our Lord found in the person of the 
Son of Mary the organic medium for contact with all the evil 
and diseased conditions of humanity. From this stand-point 
He delivered the heavens and the world of spirits from dis- 
orderly infestations, reduced the hells to order and govern- 
mental discipline, established forever the equilibrium and free 
agency of man ; and by glorifying his humanity, even to its 
flesh and bones, created a new, perpetual, divine centre in ul- 
timates, to which all forms and forces refer themselves ; thus 
securing the incessant creation and conservation of the uni- 
verse both spiritual and natural. It would take volumes, yes, 



228 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

libraries, to unfold even the most general of the transcendent 
truths involved in this little paragraph. 

He is nearer to us since his glorification, because we can 
now approach Him directly and personally on our own low 
plane of thought and feeling. We have no absolute need of 
the heavens or the church or the Word, except so far as He 
is the heaven, the church, and the Word. In other words, 
when we have Him, we have all these things ; when He enters 
and abides in us, He brings the heavens, the church, and the 
Word. If we seek these things outside of us, it is only in 
obedience to the law, that man delights to project around 
himself in objective forms the beautiful and glorious things 
that he possesses within. Man builds his churches on the 
same principle that he shapes his statues, paints his pictures, 
writes his books, and sings his songs ; for the order of influx 
is from above downward and from within outward. 

The Lord is always coming to us and always being mani- 
fested through us according to our states of reception ; but 
there are special epochs of his coming, attended by judgments, 
revelations, and new institutions, such as occurred at the flood, 
in the time of Moses, in his own earth-life, and in the last 
century. These special epochs of his coming are not caused 
by any changes in Himself, but in us ; and they are caused in 
us by rearrangements and readjustments of forms and forces 
in the societies of both heaven and hell, so that new and 
increased influxes from the spiritual into the natural plane are 
initiated. We are now in the midst of one of these mighty 
revolutions, which will go on until all things are made new. 
Into those who reject the new influx from heaven, the hells 
will enter with renewed and increasing violence. Those who 
receive it gladly, abjuring the proprium, will have Christ 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT, ETC. 229 

manifested within them and revealed through them as was 
never possible before. Paul calls this "the manifestation of 
the sons of God." This, my dear friend, over and beyond 
the coincident and necessary illumination of the spiritual 
mind, is the Second Coining of the Lord ; and He comes to 
redeem our souls and our bodies from the power of all sin ; 
and to fashion us according to the likeness of his own glorious 
body. Preach that to your people. 

You seem surprised that Swedenborg should say that the 
Hittites and Hivites were remnants of the Most Ancient 
Church, and think that the Most Ancient Church must have 
been historically quite a recent thing, notwithstanding the 
geological arguments for the immense age of the earth. Now 
Swedenborg says that some people of our own modern times 
are "remnants" of the Most Ancient Church, have perceptions 
of truth from good, etc., and are generally misunderstood by 
other people and decried as enthusiasts. There have been, 
no doubt, multitudes of that character, from the Africans who 
received the new revelation, and Guyon, Fenelon, John 
Fletcher, Charles Wesley, etc., etc., down to Jones Very and 
my friend G. W. C. It seems therefore that although a New 
Church is always built up from the "remnants" of the Old, 
not all the "remnants" are used in the building. We may 
logically suppose that there are ' ' remnants ' ' of all the Churches 
which have ever existed in the world ; and that with the open- 
ing of the interiors and the vivification of remains, all these 
Churches will be restored, not in discrete but simultaneous 
order, and we shall behold the grand solidarity of the Church 
wrought out in ultimates by the Divine hand. 

You ask whether there were long ages of barbarism and 
heathenism before the establishment of the Most Ancient 



23O LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

Church. Certainly not. There may have been long periods 
of innocent and ignorant naturalism before the evolution of 
the celestial man : but all barbarism is the proof of decline, 
of decadence, of the closure of interior degrees ; nor has any 
barbarism ever been self-developing, but has depended upon 
implantations of thought from sources higher than itself. I 
am strongly convinced that we can never get at the real facts 
of the earliest history of man, until by orderly spiritual unfold- 
ings we are brought into mental contact with the spirits of 
our antediluvian forefathers. The process of obtaining knowl- 
edge of exterior things from interior sources, is still in its 
squeaking, sputtering infancy, and excites only the contempt 
of the natural man ; but the man of spiritual insight can 
already imagine its enormous possibilities. 

Happy if I have sent a single ray of light where it did not 
shine before, I remain, 

Fraternally yours, 

W. H. H. 



LETTER XXVIII. 



WHY SHOULD WE NOT COMMUNICATE WITH THE DE- 
PARTED? SWEDENBORGIANS AND SPIRITUALISTS. 



M 



" Y DEAR MADAM : — I am always pained to see people 
who have been recently deprived of their friends rush- 
ing excitedly and hurriedly into spiritual matters, reach- 
ing out blindly in the dark, consulting mediums or clairvoy- 
ants, and yearning after communication with the dead. It is 
an unhappy and unhealthy frame of mind, productive only 
of evil. Such persons are not disinterestedly seeking the 
truth, the only way in which it can be found. Their intel- 
lect is not calmly engaged in the pursuit of a rational philoso- 
phy or religion ; but their affections are intensely aroused, 
and eager to find consolation in some kind of a reunion with 
the beloved ones who are apparently lost. 

You are now passing through this sad phase of mental 
experience. You are dissatisfied with everything you have 
read, seen, heard, or tried. You would discover some trust- 
worthy and lawful means of obtaining a personal, conscious 
companionship with your deceased husband. You would be 
assured beyond all doubt that he is still living, and that he 
is happy in his new life. You have been attracted to the 
beautiful, philosophical, and profoundly religious writings of 
Swedenborg ; and you ask me, if there is not a pure and lofty 
spiritualism within the New Church, grandly different from 
the crude, earthy, and unchristian spiritualism of modern 

231 



232 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

mediums, which can do this great work of bringing the dead 
and the living into open communication ? 

Swedenborgians are supposed by many people to be spirit- 
ualists, and even very intelligent persons are sometimes sur- 
prised to discover the antipodal relations which exist between 
them. The doctrines of spiritualism are thoroughly unchris- 
tian and pagan. They deny the divinity of Jesus Christ and 
the sacred character of the revealed Word of God ; while the 
whole system of Swedenborg from beginning to end, is based 
upon the spiritual sense of the Bible, and upon the great 
truth that Jesus Christ in his glorified humanity is absolutely 
one with the eternal Father. Spiritualism, on account of the 
blind surrender of the mind to spirit control, is fraught with 
g r eat danger to freedom of will and rationality of thought. 
Whatever it may mean or result in, it is now in a chaotic, 
certainly an embryotic condition, and offers nothing of pecu- 
liar interest to the Christian or the philosopher. It has not 
added the least thing of any value to the stock of human 
knowledge. It has proved nothing but what the Bible had 
already taught us ; that the soul of man is immortal ; that the 
spiritual world is close to us, and not away off in material 
space ; that we rise at death out of the natural body in a spir- 
itual and substantial body ; and that the life after death is a 
real, organic life, full of activities and felicities of all kinds, 
as genuine and as positive as anything we here experience. 

Swedenborg is the great expounder of the spiritualism of 
the Bible and of the Christian religion. He was duly pre- 
pared and empowered to unfold to us the organic philosophy 
of the universe, the laws and phenomena of the other life, the 
harmonies and differences between the spiritual and natural 
worlds, the mysteries of death, resurrection, and judgment, 



SEEK NOT INTERCOURSE WITH THE DEAD. 233 

and all that is right or useful for us to know in the present 
age of the world. He has executed his mission in such a 
clear, thorough, and comprehensive manner, and with such a 
truly scientific and rational spirit, that he seems to have left 
nothing for others to do ; so that it is exceedingly rare for 
a man well read in Swedenborg, to take the least interest in 
the phenomena or literature of spiritualism. Why should he 
listen to the babbling of children about subjects above their 
comprehension, when his eyes have been opened to a tran- 
scendent system of spiritual philosophy which has been un- 
folded to mankind by Divine permission? What are even 
the most learned metaphysical and theological discussions 
of the age to him, but the useless efforts of the subjects of 
an old regime to reanimate their dead king, not having yet 
discovered that the new king, his successor, is standing at 
the door? 

Now what light does Swedenborg give us on this question 
of communication with our departed friends ? 

We can imagine a state of human perfection, such as is 
credited to the people of the golden age, when . angels and 
men conversed together in friendly intercourse. Swedenborg 
says that such a state actually once existed, and was lost to 
mankind by the gradual development and growth of evil. 
The restoration of the race to that happy condition is not an 
impossibility, for the upward evolution of life is continually 
directed by a power of infinite love and wisdom, a power 
embodied in the divine humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
Swedenborg teaches that these states of visible, audible, tan- 
gible consociation of men with good spirits and angels, are 
dependent upon the organic conditions of the human race. 
Only the pure in heart can see God. Nothing produces 



234 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

spiritual presence but thorough affinity and similarity of 
affection and thought. This is a law of the spiritual world 
from which there is no escape. When men are delivered 
from evil, when they abstain from all sin, when they love the 
neighbor better than themselves, when they manifest the 
operating Spirit of God in them in the minutest thoughts, 
affections, and actions of life, the golden age of the past, or 
the still more beautiful golden age of the future, will be pos- 
sible — but not before. 

Our practical concerns are not with the past or the future, 
but with our present organic conditions. The world is at this 
time exceedingly evil. The heavenly standard of the spiritual 
life, as stated above, is absolutely and utterly unrealized among 
men. The heavens and the best portions or elements of the 
world of spirits, are therefore necessarily closed against us. 
If the spirits most nearly consociated with us by our evil, false, 
sensual, and selfish states of life, were permitted to make 
themselves visible, audible, and tangible to us, we should find 
that the very hells had broken loose upon the earth. We are 
preserved in our present closed conditions by the providential 
mercy of God. Those who endeavor to pierce the veil through 
presumption, ambition, or idle curiosity, are most likely to 
come into contact with vain, selfish, cunning, sensual, dicta- 
torial, evil spirits, and with no others. Nor could anything 
be expected from them but fallacy, delusion, mischief, trickery, 
impositions, domineering devices, and pretended revelations. 

There is one grand, conclusive, and perfectly satisfactory 
reason why your husband cannot communicate with you, and 
why you should not even wish him to do so. After death the 
spirit undergoes various changes of state in the world of spirits, 
before it can be prepared for consociation with angels and 



SEEK NOT INTERCOURSE WITH THE DEAD. 235 

entrance into heaven. These changes are made in part by 
putting off the forms of external thought and affection which 
bind it to the natural world with its limitations of time and 
space. Anything which would bring it back into those old 
earth-states of feeling and idea, would arrest its spiritual 
progress, draw it backward to earth, and violate the laws of 
spiritual evolution, which are so beneficent in their operation 
for the associated happiness of each and all, and for the final 
and perfect union of affiliated souls. The spiritualists seem 
to know nothing of the great organic processes by which the 
spirit thus puts off the natural sphere and becomes adapted to 
spiritual spheres — a fact which alone should make us regard 
their communications with suspicion and distrust, as coming 
from very immature, earthly, and external spirits. 

The spiritualists also ignore one of the fundamental truths 
of Swedenborg's system, viz., that the spiritual and natural 
worlds are discretely separated from each other — that each 
has its specific forms and forces and its special life resulting 
from them. The other life is far more perfect than this in 
all its forms of public, social, and private uses. But these 
things cannot be communicated by the mere guidance and 
instruction of spirits. They grow out of ourselves after death, 
according to what our life has been in this world, by a process 
of evolution. That life is the fruit, of which our earth-states 
are the leaves and flowers. The two lives cannot and ought 
not to be mingled upon the same plane. The birds of the 
spiritual atmospheres cannot swim in the seas of natural 
thought. Our natural life must be governed by science, 
reason, and the wisdom of the Word of God, and not by 
advice and control from invisible sources, either good or bad. 
Nothing could be more disastrous to his spiritual welfare, and 



236 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

to your own welfare both spiritual and natural, than for your 
husband to appear regularly to you and give advice and direc- 
tion in all your worldly affairs. 

Although your husband has gone from you and seems to be 
receding still farther from you all the time, there is one sense 
in which you may be drawing still nearer to him, and becom- 
ing more and more closely associated with him. Swedenborg 
says that a man's life consists in his love and his affections; 
and that those who are in similar loves and similar affections 
are always present with each other, whether they are con- 
scious of it or not. United at the central points of life, two 
souls will finally overcome all temporary separations of time, 
space, and accident, and become united also in their circum- 
ferences or outward surroundings, so as to be always con- 
sciously together. 

Now, two souls do not attain this spiritual unition which 
insures their eternal spiritual presence and consociation in 
the other life, by simply loving each other as we do upon 
earth. They must become spiritually similar ; they must 
love the same things and in the same way — God, the Word, 
the church, the neighbor, society, and the business and uses 
of life. In other words, they must think and feel in perfect 
harmony and sympathy in the most thorough and organic 
manner. 

The things which tended to keep you and your husband 
separate here, the cares and labors of the world, family, 
friends, men, women, and all the habits, customs, tastes, and 
peculiarities of the earth-life, have been all taken away from 
him. He is elevated into a sphere entirely above them. 
They separate you from him no longer. But the things 
which unite you and will continue to unite you more closely 



SEEK NOT INTERCOURSE WITH THE DEAD. 237 

are common to you both. They are not taken away from 
you, and they are more vivid and powerful than ever with 
him. They are the true knowledge and love of God and of 
the Word of God, delight in keeping the commandments of 
God, in faith, charity, good works, and all the graces and 
virtues of the Christian soul. These are the sacred interior 
bonds which unite the angels of heaven, with infinite varie- 
ties and specialties, into the most perfect societary, tribal, 
and family organizations, blending the male and female spirit 
into that sublime oneness which the Word indicates when it 
says, " and they twain shall be one flesh." 

How are you to attain this spiritual oneness with your lost 
husband ? Not by thinking continually of his dead form, 
and brooding over the solitudes of the grave. He is not 
there ; he is risen in a spiritual body ; and you will never find 
him, or come within the sphere of his ascended soul, among 
the habitations of the dead. Not by clinging to him as he 
was in the past, and preserving his thoughts, opinions, prej- 
udices, affections, etc., as sacred things which you must 
cherish for his sake. He is undergoing spiritual revolutions 
about all these things, casting them gradually off like old gar- 
ments, and entering upon entirely new conditions. You will 
probably not find him in his past life any more than you will 
find him in the grave. 

Endeavor to keep pace with him in the spiritual revolu- 
tions he is undergoing. Die w T ith him to all earthly things, 
except for the spiritual uses contained in them. Abstain 
with him absolutely from all sins of thought, deed, and tem- 
per, so that the spirit of God can enter and abide in your 
heart, thoroughly vacated of self. Make yourself acquainted 
with that vast system of spiritual truth, revealed through Swe- 



238 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

denborg, into which he is even now being initiated by good 
spirits, his instructors in the better world. Strive to enter 
into the ways of that new life which he is now living ; and 
the Lord who arranges the societies and the individuals of 
the spirit world, and who from the beginning ordained coun- 
terpart for counterpart, will surely bring you together. 

Such is the spiritualism of the New Church based upon the 
doctrines of Swedenborg. You see how immensely it differs 
from the spiritualism of the day. It has no sensations, no 
mediums, no seances, no advice or control of spirits, no 
communications from the dead to offer you. It has none but 
intellectual and moral attractions. It teaches that all genu- 
ine openings of the spirit and revelations from the interior, 
come from the Lord and the Lord alone. It repudiates as 
untrue and untrustworthy everything that does not bear the 
sign and seal of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

That such openings of the spirit and revelations from the 
interior will occur, and even become abundant in the future 
of the New Church, is probable ; but they will proceed un- 
sought from within, and be subservient to spiritual uses only, 
connected with the regeneration of the individual or the de- 
velopment of the church. They will bear the unmistakable 
impress of the descending sphere of the Divine Humanity. 

" When He putteth forth his own sheep, He goeth before them 
and the sheep follow Him ; for they know his voice. 

" And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him; 
for they know not the voice of strangers." — John x. 45. 

In this true Christian spiritualism, of which the revelation 
through Swedenborg is the beginning, you will find light and 
peace. 

Yours truly, W. H. H. 



LETTER XXIX. 

MEDIUMS IN THE NEW CHURCH: THE PHENOMENA AND 
THE LA W OF THE PHENOMENA. 



M' 



Y DEAR SIR: — I am glad you have given me so full 
an account of the interesting and remarkable experi- 
ences of Mr. M. They are phenomena which deserve 
to be studied and recorded, as all phenomena do, whether 
great or small. The true philosopher wants the facts of a case, 
because the facts are the ultimates, the basis,, the containants 
of all the causes and principles involved in their production. 
You ask my opinion of the phenomena; and I give it with 
great pleasure and with great candor, for the subject is of vital 
interest to the church and the world. 

The facts you relate are substantially these : A good man, 
far advanced in life (aged 65), becomes an earnest student of 
Swedenborg and the Bible, spending much of his time in 
contemplation and prayer. He enters into a state of open 
vision, sees the Lord and angels, passes through terrible strug- 
gles with the hells, and finally attains to a state of celestial 
peace and joy, free from all combat and full of heavenly light. 
He is now a medium of great power. Spirits or angels read 
the Word with him or through him, and his voice changes 
when they take possession of his vocal apparatus. He is 
frequently entranced so that he remembers nothing of what 
he has said. His illustrations of spiritual truth are beautiful 
and powerful, sometimes consciously derived from spirits, and 
his utterances in entranced prayer are touching and wonderful 

239 



24O LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

beyond description. He claims frequently that the apostles 
or prophets or the Lord Himself, are present and speak and 
illustrate through him and the sphere of his ministration is 
productive of great enlightenment, peace, and joy to those 
who hear him. 

Now what is the true nature, and what is the real value of 
these phenomena? Is this medium "a chosen instrument of 
the Lord to declare the truth to man," as you say and believe ? 
Or is this case, like all others, only one special manifestation 
of a universal Law infinitely transcending it, and including it 
and all similar correlated phenomena as the ocean includes 
every one of its waves ? 

So far as Mr. M. is an entranced medium, controlled and 
dictated to by spirits outside of his own consciousness, he 
does not rise above the level of Andrew Jackson Davis or any 
of the controlled mediums of modern spiritualism. To the 
appreciative student of Swedenborg, the utterances of a man 
under such conditions are worth very little. The sources of 
error, fallacy, and fantasy from such ambushed guides, are too 
numerous to give their dicta the least authority. What they 
say must be submitted to rational analysis. If they agree with 
Swedenborg and the Word, we will accept them at their real 
value. If they differ from Swedenborg and the Word, we 
should reject them without the least hesitation. And I am 
free to confess that I do not at present see the use in the spirits 
or angels connected with the new heavens endeavoring to 
preach, teach, or instruct men upon earth, when the Lord has 
so plainly intrusted that mission to Swedenborg in opening 
his Word, and when Swedenborg has executed it in such a 
perfect manner, that very few of his readers have ever mas- 



MEDIUMS IN THE NEW CHURCH. 24 1 

tered or utilized the tenth part of the stupendous system which 
he has unfolded to our spiritual vision. 

What possible benefit can we derive from angelic instruc- 
tion ? Swedenborg says that when an angel descends from 
his own to a lower discrete degree of thought, he loses his 
wisdom and his insight, and becomes stupid and common- 
place. An angel entering into the natural plane of our minds 
has his own natural degree reopened, and is simply the man 
he was before his departure from this world, and knows very 
little more than we do about heavenly matters. On the other 
hand, if a man be elevated into the interior degrees by open 
respiration, he enters into states of knowledge which he can- 
not retain when he returns to his natural life. 

Our true bond of connection with the angels and with 
heaven is the Divine Word. If we wish to know more of the 
Word than has been revealed to Swedenborg, or to have our 
lives directed by a higher power than our own rational facul- 
ties, the way is very plain. It is by a far more organic and 
lasting process than conversations with angels. The first step 
is to store our minds with the knowledges of truths which 
lead to good. The next step is, by a genuine and thorough 
life according to the commandments, to conjoin our will- 
principle with the will-principle of the angels, and thence 
from good as a centre, see all the truths flowing from good 
which they see, and which are necessary to the uses of our 
life to all eternity. 

" During man's initiation into truth, and thence into 
good, all that he learns is obscure to him ; but when good is 
conjoined to him, and he thence regards truth, it then be- 
comes clear to him, and this successively more and more \ for 
now he is no longer in doubt whether a thing be, or whether 
21 Q 



242 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

it be so, but he knows that it is, and that it is so. When 
man is in this state, he then begins to know innumerable 
things, for he now proceeds from the good and truth which 
he perceives and believes, as from a centre to circumference. 
Thence the light of truth from good increases immensely, 
and becomes a continuous lucidity : for he is then in the light 
of heaven which is from the Lord." — A. C. 3833. 

We must remember that the world of spirits has an increas- 
ing multitude of New- Church people in it, both from resur- 
rection out of this world and from instruction in that one. 
We must, therefore, not hasten to conclude that every me- 
dium who teaches the genuine doctrines of the church, is the 
organ of a new revelation from^ heaven. He may only be 
brought into rapport with spirits on the interior-natural plane, 
who think and feel in harmony with himself, and echo his own 
sentiments and opinions. This is probably the case with your 
friend M. and with Mrs. T. of the Riverside Circle. I would 
not hesitate to put James Johnston in the same class, but for 
certain remarkable peculiarities in his history and conduct 
not necessary now to mention. 

You say in the last meeting you held, the prophet Samuel, 
Michael, and John the Baptist, and others were present. 
Now Michael was not a personage but a name expressive of 
an angelic function, and so of a certain divine principle in 
the Lord Himself. (A. C. 1705, 8192.) In this fact you 
have the key to the appearance of all the Biblical worthies in 
the visions and trances of Christian people. It is exceed- 
ingly improbable that any of these persons are ever present 
with the medium. They are, no doubt, far away from us in 
the old heavens which were separated from the new heavens 
from which our present influx is received. But when spirits 



MEDIUMS IN THE NEW CHURCH. 243 

belonging to a certain order or type of spiritual function 
or use represented by Samuel, Michael, or John, approach a 
medium, they flow into the knowledges of his mind and pro- 
duce the impression that such are their names. This explains 
many of the phenomena of Spiritism, and accounts for the 
very stupid things we get from Swedenborg, Benj. Franklin, 
Robert Hall, and other celebrities. 

I am quite sure that you are mistaken in supposing that Mr. 
M. is opened into the celestial degree of life, or is guided by 
celestial angels. The celestial never teach or preach as the 
spiritual do. They never discuss truths, and even dislike 
very much to speak of faith or doctrine. They never pray 
with the Methodistic spiritual-natural fervor that Mr. M. ex- 
hibits (see A. C. 10,295). Nor, if he were in a celestial state, 
would he need any aid or suggestions from spirits, for he would 
perceive truth from good without assistance or discussion. 

The states of freedom from combats and the consequent 
influx of peace and joy from the Lord, are common to the 
angels of all the heavens, celestial, spiritual, and natural. 
Indeed there could be no heaven without these sabbath states 
of the soul. Their existence does not prove that a man has 
been introduced into the third or celestial heaven. They 
only indicate that he has entered upon the second state of 
regeneration : that he has contended against his evils by the 
divine power of truth, until he has attained to states of good, 
or the new proprium, from which and through which our 
Lord descends into his whole spiritual being, and transforms 
him into his own image and likeness. These states of re- 
pose, peace, and joy are attainable and have often been at- 
tained in this world. Alas ! for the man who calls himself a 
Christian, and knows nothing of these states from personal 
experience. 



244 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

Your medium tells you that the New Church is dead, and 
warns you against making an idol of Swedenborg. Now all 
churches and indeed all men are spiritually dead, except so 
far as they are in the life of charity. The living presence of 
the Lord is evinced, not by doctrines or organizations, but by 
these three infallible signs — the state of humiliation, the re- 
nunciation of evils as sins against God, and the keeping of 
the commandments. Wherever these states are found, the 
Lord and the angels and the church are present, and so far as 
the New Church is in those states it is living and not dead ; 
and precisely how far it may be in those states we are not per- 
mitted to judge. 

When people either in this world or in the world of spirits 
tell us not to make an idol of Swedenborg, I do not think it 
is always uncharitable to suspect that they have some idol of 
their own to bring forward and take the place of Swedenborg. 
The revealer of the spiritual sense of the Word is also the 
great enunciator of liberty and rationality in spiritual things ; 
and if any man makes an idol or an infallible authority of 
him, he does so in the face of his own incomparable teachings. 
He has been the medium of revealing to us inexhaustible 
fountains of the true wisdom from within ; and whilst I retain 
my right to ignore or reject anything in his writings which my 
rational faculty cannot accept, I am indebted to him beyond 
all measure or power of expression. 

After due consideration, my dear sir, I do not see that the 
phenomena presented by Mr. M. rise above the world of 
spirits, or have any direct connection with any of the heavens. 
I do not believe that all the spirits who communicate with 
men are evil, or come to us with evil intent. I think good 
phases of spiritualism may be developed to counteract the bad ; 



MEDIUMS IN THE NEW CHURCH. 245 

for you may be sure the Lord will guide and govern through 
all good or evil appearances. I have no sympathy with the 
fear our people have, of grappling with spirit-phenomena. 
The New Church alone has the light and the power to do so 
with benefit to all concerned. I do not believe that class of 
evil spirits who feign goodness, and favor a man's opinions in 
order to lead him into sin and falsity, can stand the sphere of 
one who acknowledges the Divine Humanity, and with genuine 
humility, self-renunciation, and prayer, looks to the Lord alone. 
The Peter of the New Church is sinking from lack of faith. 
Let him grasp the hand of the Lord and walk boldly upon 
the water in the midst of the storm. 

Whilst, indeed, evil spirits are inconceivably false, corrupt, 
cunning, and subtle, and are working, and will yet work tre- 
mendous harm in the world, and are to be greatly dreaded 
and avoided, I think what we may call New-Church spirit- 
ualism, of which the phenomena you present for consideration 
are a good type, is going to increase, and may prove a power 
in the church and the world. It will flow from good spirits in 
the world of spirits, still probably in their external states, but 
anxious to comfort and enlighten the friends they have left be- 
hind. Their movements will be permissions from the Lord, 
who will guide them through all imperfections and appearances 
of truth, to genuine good. Such phenomena may be the means 
of breaking up existing organizations ; for I believe the Lord 
will never permit our New-Church people to build up a great 
hierarchy or church-establishment on the old models. The 
church-building or religious proprium in both clergy and laity 
will resist or scout such an idea, but it will be in vain. The 
Lord Himself in his own personal atmospheres is moving from 

centres to circumferences, to establish his church and to re- 
21 * 



246 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

organize society, not according to old methods, but in the 
very form and order of heaven ; and all things that oppose 
his movements from the interior, will be swept away. 

When these things come to pass, there will be cries of " Lo ! 
here " and " Lo ! there " echoed throughout the Church ; and 
each new development will have its friends who accept it as 
the central point of divine influx into the world. Men will 
commit the serious error of mistaking the phenomena for the 
law by which they are manifested, and will misconstrue their 
character and over-estimate their importance. We may be 
sure that very few of these "openings" will have any real 
value to unfold or expound the truth. Their use and the test 
of their orderly or disorderly character will be found in their 
moral effect. If they exhale a steady, permanent sphere of 
chastity and conjugial purity, of personal humiliation and self- 
sacrifice, of independence, rationality, and all the activities of 
the life of charity, we may accept them as of the Lord. But 
the development of a thousand such centres into active opera- 
tion, would not diminish one iota the necessity of the study 
of Swedenborg and the Word, nor the propriety of external 
instruction and worship, varied according to the conditions 
and exigencies of human life. 

The law which transcends, includes, and explains all the 
phenomena, is this : 

The Divine Humanity of our Lord is descending from pri- 
mates to ultimates, moving from centres to circumferences, 
entering the general Body of Humanity, and manifesting 
Itself in a thousand different ways according to the organic 
states of affection and thought in the recipients. This is the 
key to all the historical, social, and religious phenomena of 
the century. This law explains Mr. M. and Mrs. T., James 



MEDIUMS IN THE NEW CHURCH. 2Atf 

Johnston, T. L. Harris, and my friend G. W. C. ; the ad- 
vanced rationality of Brooks, Beecher, Swing, Collyer, and 
others, the revivalism of Moody, Harrison, and Barnes, the 
sensational ecstasies of our friend P., the Woman Movement, 
the Faith Cures, the Socialism, the Scientism, the Salvation 
army, and all the agitations of the day. The phenomena are 
many, the source is One. It is the proprium which seizes 
upon the phenomena, and construes and appropriates them to 
its own benefit or gratification. They are common property 
and consociated parts of a stupendous whole. Foreseeing the 
chaos of conflicting opinions and conduct these innumerable 
phenomena would engender, our Lord has mercifully given 
us beforehand a key to them all, a guide through all perplexi- 
ties, a protection against all dangers, a test of all spirits, a 
perfect mirror of Law, Truth, and Order in the writings of 
Emanuel Swedenborg. 

In the study of all spiritual phenomena, the great question 
for us who believe the doctrine of the Divine Humanity to 
ask ourselves, is this : Is the Lord Jesus Christ in them, and 
how does He manifest Himself? The fact that spirits teach 
the doctrines of the New Church is of no significance by 
itself; for the most subtle and evil spirits will cast themselves 
into the molds of our own affections and thoughts. The fact 
that great personages profess to be present, is reasonable 
ground for believing that the inflated proprium of the medium 
is being played upon by the invisible control. Our Lord's 
manifestations are of a different order. They are movements 
upon the heart, a breath from the celestial sphere. They are 
shown by increased humility, by more thorough abstinence 
from sin, by a growing spirit of self-sacrifice and charity, and 
a constant, interior looking toward the Divine Man. In 



248 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

these states of the life, no spiritual communications can harm 

us. In these states perhaps none are necessary. Do not seek 

them ; but if they come spontaneously, test them severely and 

thoroughly. 

Yours truly, 

W. H. H. 



LETTER XXX. 

THE BIBLE OF THE SPIRITUALISTS.— THE TRUE TESTS 
OF REVELATION.— RELIGIOUS CRANKS. 



M 



Y DEAR SIR: — You tell me that you are deeply in- 
terested in that new, strange, enormous book called 
Oahspe — the Bible of the Spiritualists, a book written 
by inspiration or dictation from the spiritual world through a 
gentleman of New York city. Another friend thinks it is a 
perfect epitome of all the best things in all religions, and a 
common platform upon which Jews, Heathen, Christians, 
Spiritualists, and all can stand in brotherhood and peace. 

You have a great deal to say in commendation of its char- 
acter, its purity, benevolence, good influence, and spiritual 
wisdom. You are almost ready to believe that it has emanated 
from some portion of the new heaven which is descending to 
organize the new earth. I am a little surprised that so good 
a student of Swedenborg as yourself, should have apparently 
lost sight of the two fundamental points of doctrine, which 
constitute the final and perfect tests to be applied to every- 
thing claiming to be a revelation from heaven, viz. : the 
Divine Humanity of Jesus Christ, and the co-existence and 
correspondence of celestial, spiritual, and natural senses in 
every genuine Word of God. 

Oahspe, you say, deals largely in the various incarnations 
of Jehovah, and admits the Lord Jesus Christ to be one of 
those incarnations, but denies his miraculous birth from the 

virgin. Now this idea of divine incarnations, which runs all 

249 



250 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

through the oriental mythologies and religions, has something 
in it radically false. There never was and never can be but 
one incarnation of the Divine Being ; and that of necessity 
took place through a virgin mother without the mediation of 
a human father. Jehovah cannot be incarnated in a man with 
two earthly parents. Such a man can only be filled to his 
little finite measure with the Spirit of God. To say that Jesus 
Christ had an earthly father, is to nullify the whole work of 
redemption ; for a soul derived from a human father would 
interpose an insuperable barrier between the descending Divine 
and the ultimate forms derived from the mother. 

" It is altogether impossible for any man to be born of a 
human parent without deriving evil thence. Nevertheless 
there is a difference between hereditary evil derived from the 
father, and that which is derived from the mother. Hereditary 
evil from .the father is of a more interior nature, and remains 
to eternity, for it can never be eradicated. The Lord, however, 
had no such evil, since He was born of Jehovah as his Father, 
and thus as to his internals, was Himself Divine or Jehovah/ ' 
—A. C. 1573. 

This settles the question ; and the author of any book who 
denies the birth of Christ from the virgin Mary in what we 
call a miraculous manner, is in spiritual darkness, has no true 
knowledge of the Lord, or of the uses of his incarnation, or 
of the glorification of the human nature, or the wonderful 
processes of individual regeneration. 

We know nothing whatever of the Supreme Being except 
as He has been revealed to us in the Divine Humanity of 
Jesus Christ. "No man hath seen God at any time : the only 
begotten Son which is in the* bosom of the Father, He hath de- 
clared Him" (John i. 18.) The revelation of God in Christ, 



THE TRUE TESTS OF REVELATION. 25 I 

especially after the unfolding of the spiritual sense of the 
Word, is perfect and complete. With this transcendent: reve- 
lation before us, how can we listen to the little cries of " Lo ! 
here, lo ! there ' ' which echo around us ? There are no true 
Gods and false Gods, as Oahspe has it. There is only one 
God — the Divine Man, Jesus Christ ; and the use of the term 
God in relation to other persons, is disagreeable if not actually 
obnoxious. The word Lord seems to me greatly preferable 
to Jehovah. 

• The Divine Humanity is the only Mediator between the 
Divine and the human ; and there can be only one Divine 
Humanity. So the Divine Humanity has only one Word or 
Logos by which He has revealed Himself to men. There can 
be no Bibles or revelations from heaven except through Him; 
and as his wisdom moves from centres to circumferences, 
accommodating itself to successive spheres, his genuine Word 
must always have celestial, spiritual, and natural meanings, 
one existing from the other, and the internal meanings con- 
cealed within the external. If Oahspe cannot stand this test 
— and I presume it cannot — you may be sure that it emanates 
from the world of spirits only, from the interior-sensual degree 
of the natural plane of the human mind, and must rank with 
the writings of Buddha, Confucius, Seneca, Marcus Antoninus, 
Mahomet, and others, according to its own merits. 

The letter from your young friend W. L. C. shows that he 
is what I call a religious crank. He is a " Christ-child " with 
a great and important mission to all the " Christ-children.' * 
He will have exhibitions, public demonstrations, and deliver 
messages, etc., etc. Most people would advise him strongly 
to suppress himself, and would reason with him to convince 
him of the folly and vanity of his expectations. G. W. C.'s 



252 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

advice is different. Let him go ahead and utter himself to 
the utmost. Let him exhibit his mission and do his best to fill 
it. All men must finally be brought to that point of proclaim- 
ing in the streets those things which they have hitherto only 
whispered in the secret chambers. A general turning inside 
out is exactly what the world needs, a revelation to ourselves 
of the bedlams and hells which are concealed within us all. 

In special relation to this " Christ-child/ ' G. W. C. adds, 
that no degree of guilelessness, of good intention, pious zeal, 
and honest religious endeavor can save any man from the 
penalties of violated law, — violated from ignorance or other- 
wise. The animal kingdom rests upon the previously developed 
mineral and vegetable kingdoms. Celestial and spiritual 
things flow into corresponding natural things in which their 
power and uses are manifested. Therefore the man who utters 
his interior life without a fixed organic basis of genuine natural 
truth and common-sense, will inevitably end in disappoint- 
ment, failure, exposure, and rejection. Yet these experiments 
and failures must needs be made, for much of the wisdom of 
the future will be evolved from the miserable blunders and 
follies of the present. 

You say you are a kind of "universal believer." In a cer- 
tain broad sense it is well to be a " universally associated man, ' ' 
an accepter of all theologies, a rejecter of none, who sees what 
good and truth are to be found in all things, and excuses the 
evil and the false. Yet theologies differ like races and men. 
All may possess only apparent truths ; but some are far in 
advance of others, and all are vastly below the wisdom of the 
angels. It is best for us to adhere with growing affections to 
the highest known standard, such as that of Swedenborg, and 
from its stand-points to survey all others charitably, truthfully, 



THE TRUE TESTS OF REVELATION. 2$$ 

and helpfully. Nearest to the truth must always be best for 
the life. 

It is probably true, as you suggest, that there is great im- 
provement going on in the Spiritualistic movement. Its 
advocates have discovered that there are great dangers and 
evils in submitting to indiscriminate spirit control ; and a 
strong endeavor is also being made to eject the false and hy- 
pocritical elements from their midst. These advances are no 
doubt similar to corresponding but more concealed improve- 
ments going on in the hells, which are being ultimated in the 
phenomena of Spiritism. They may be matters of great in- 
terest to the philosophical student, but from a religious or 
vital stand-point, what are they to us ? The man who has 
realized the stupendous light and liberty of New-Church 
truth, ought to have two fixed rules of conduct in relation to 
these things ; first, never to submit himself to be the medium 
or victim of spiritual obsessions ; and second, never to pay 
the least attention to anything written or spoken by any man 
under the control of spirits. 

Hold fast the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. 

Yours fraternally, 

W. H. H. 

22 



M' 



LETTER XXXI. 

THE DIVINE MOTHERHOOD CRITICISED. 

Y DEAR FRIEND:— When G. W. C. read your arti- 
cle on the Divine Motherhood, he exclaimed, "This 
doctrine of a Divine Father and a Divine Mother — a 
divine Two-in-One, taught by Harris and here seen and felt 

by p ? i s more abhorrent to me than the three persons 

in one God of the Old Church. It is utterly false, fantas- 
tic and degrading — except when the idea is designed to be 
purely figurative. " 

We have no knowledge whatever of the Divine Being ex- 
cept as He has been revealed to us in the Word and in the 
person of Jesus Christ. Throughout the entire Word there is 
no hint of a female element in the Lord. He is, indeed, 
called Husband and Bridegroom ; but the bride, the wife, is 
no substance or quality in Himself, but it is the church out- 
side of his infinity — a discreted, finite, created form, which 
He impregnates with his Divine Love which is masculine, 
and from which He creates infinite series of goods and truths 
as children. The Church is our Mother. In the natural de- 
gree, Nature is our mother — a vast organic Form, which is 
impregnated by the Divine Life as a Father, and brings forth 
the innumerable wonders of creation. 

The Lord Jesus Christ among all his beautiful sayings and 
teachings, makes not the faintest allusion to any feminine 
counterpart, or to any state of motherhood in the Divine 
nature. Swedenborg, moreover, in all his vast experiences 

254 



THE DIVINE MOTHERHOOD CRITICISED, 255 

in the spiritual world, and all his wonderful unfoldings of the 
Word itself, has no line which would warrant or countenance 
such a grossly anthropomorphic idea of the Divine Being. I 
am sure that the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of Man, 
the interior motherhood of the Church, and the exterior 
motherhood of nature, express all the general truths on that 
subject which have yet been made known to us by reason or 
by revelation. 

In the Lord the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom are 
absolutely one and indivisible, and can never truthfully be 
conceived of as made up of two elements like male and 
female. It is only in finite forms that differentiations occur, 
and the plural number becomes possible. The "we," "us," 
etc., applied to God, originated in the finite mind of man, 
which saw Him in double or triple forms, created by the 
Divine Life passing through his own double or triple struct- 
ures. 

Your having felt the Divine-Mother-love flowing through 
your whole frame with inexpressible and overwhelming de- 
lights, and receiving " as from heaven " a form of prayer to 
the Divine Mother inside of the Divinity, can have no possi- 
ble weight or value in the eye of reason. Sensational ecsta- 
sies, from the oldest Catholic saints down to the latest negro 
camp-meeting, have been compatible and co-existent with 
the wildest aberrations of the intellectual faculty. The spir- 
itual senses like the natural, must have their fallacies cor- 
rected by a light and a power from a source above their own 
level. 

Yours fraternally, 

W. H. H. 



M 



LETTER XXXII. 

TO A NEWCHURCHMAN INFESTED BY SPIRITS. 

' Y DEAR SIR : — I am very much pleased to hear from 
you again ; and my long silence must not be attributed 
to any loss of interest in your welfare, but to a feeling 
that it was best to let you alone until you became satisfied, 
and perhaps wearied arid disgusted, with your wanderings in 
the intricate mazes of modern spiritual phenomena. 

I am not conscious of feeling any " displeasure ' ' toward 
you. It is a brotherly sorrow that one so well acquainted in- 
tellectually with the heavenly doctrines, could be led off to 
take the slightest interest in any form of Spiritism. The 
legitimate fruit of such a state of mind is recorded in your 
own sad and despairing words : " I go to the Park and walk 
over the most lonely paths I can find, in states of anguish and 
expectancy, looking for light in the clouds and trees.* ' What 
a melancholy picture ! A man whose eyes have been opened 
so that he can look into the Word and see the ineffable won- 
ders it contains, and who has learned the precious and glo- 
rious doctrine of the Divine Humanity, walking about in 
lonely places, seeking to assuage the anguish of his soul in 
the cold and dead light of natural things ! 

Why should there be any solitude, or any anguish, or any 
doubt ? Why not perpetual assurance, peace, and joy ? Is 
it not because you have turned away from the waters of the 
living Word — "the waters of Shiloh that go softly" — to 

drink of the muddy waters of that great Assyrian river that 

256 



A NEWCHURCHMAN INFESTED BY SPIRITS. 2^J 

represents the self-derived, inquisitive, assertive, appreci- 
ative intelligence of the natural man ? Have you forgotten 
the tender reproach of our Lord, "Ye will not come unto me 
that ye might have life "? or his still more tender invitation, 
" Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and 
I will give you rest " ? 

If you will earnestly and seriously study a single volume of 
the Arcana Ccelestia, I am sure you will find more spiritual 
light — genuine, soul-satisfying, prolific light — than you will 
ever discover " in the clouds and trees," or in the muddy 
streams of spiritualistic literature ; or even in the highest, 
and best and wisest speculations of the unillumined human 
mind. O my friend ! why should you live in the tombs and 
lacerate yourself with stones on the mountain of illusion ? Or 
why should you attempt to satisfy your soul's hunger with 
husks in the valley of spiritual vastation ? Is there not bread 
enough in our Father's house and to spare? 

Perhaps I have said too much. Perhaps I have intruded 
unwarrantably upon the privacies of your spiritual life. And 
yet my heart would not permit me to say less. I have been 
in states similar to yours — but far worse. In states, not of 
spiritual darkness and doubt, for I knew very well where the 
light was, and I shunned and feared it ; but in states of inte- 
rior temptation of the will-principle, of the very life. I, too, 
have wandered alone, but in the midnight solitude of a great 
city, as solitary as the sparrow on the house-top, full of an- 
guish and despair, feeling the paralyzing influx of some ante- 
diluvian hell. In and out of these dreadful states for twenty 
years, my religious life was truly the stormy passage of the 
ark upon the waters of the flood. And yet I have found peace 
and rest — almost perfect peace and perfect rest. And I found 



258 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

it where you and all others may find it — in the knowledge 
and belief of the stupendous fact, unknown in the Old Church, 
vaguely comprehended in the New, that the Lord Jesus Christ 
has "come again, " and stands in ultimates, with "power 
over all flesh"! in the personal atmosphere of his Divine 
sensuo-corporeal degree, ready and able to heal all diseases, 
to remit all sins, and to cast out all devils. Individual, per- 
sonal rapport with this Divine Man, by faith, by prayer, by 
love, will alone make us whole ; and then we shall be free 
indeed. 

Now this sublime truth which I have been called to teach 
and illustrate, is the key to all the wonderful phenomena 
which are transpiring, and the still more wonderful phe- 
nomena which are approaching their manifestation. The 
inquiry of my soul in relation to yourself is this : Why should 
he who has known and loved the genuine truth, be satisfied to 
dwell in the far off circumferences amid gentile and pagan 
elements of the New Church now universally forming, when 
so much clearer light and sweeter life await him nearer to 
the centre ? 

I cannot part from you, my friend : I cannot leave you as 

you are. Arise and follow me, for the Lord hath called us. 

Yours truly, 

W. H. H. 



LETTER XXXIII. 

IF THE HELLS WERE SUBJUGATED BY THE LORD, WHAT 
NEED OF A SECOND COMING? — WHY IS SPIRITISM SO 
GENERALLY EVIL AND FALSE? 



M 



Y DEAR SIR:— You ask ; " If the Lord subdued the 
hells at his First Advent and kept them in subjection, 
why was there no visible, historical result from it in the 
world ? And how did the hells rise up again, and render a 
Second Advent necessary ? ' ' 

You say truly, " These are great and deep questions; " but 
I think you are mistaken when you want "a clear answer put 
in few words, because truth is elastic and compressible." 
Great truths can only be seen by the combined light of many 
associated truths. You cannot understand a universal truth 
until you have mastered many of its contained particulars. 
Try to explain Swedenborg's assertion that God is not only a 
Man, but the only Man, " in a few words," and you will realize 
the difficulty of what you require. 

Our Lord at his first advent entered the human form and 
took on all its infirmities, including the limitations of time 
and space. He was then like each of us, a microcosm, a 
miniature of the universe. From this stand-point He as- ' 
cended and descended by continuous extensions of affection 
and thought into all the societies of heaven and hell, just as 
we do in a small finite way to certain societies ; but his pro- 
gressions of state went on until He assumed in his own person 

all the states of angels and devils, and reduced both heaven 

259 



26o LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

and hell into perfect order, so far, and so far only (mark the 
words) as they were ultimated upon his own glorified human 
nature. The relation of all other human forms to heaven and 
hell remained exactly what it was before. The hells are sub- 
jugated only in the Divine Natural Humanity ; and no one 
can be delivered from hell, except as he puts on Jesus Christ, 
and enters into Him so as to become a member of his body — 
of his flesh and of his bones. There is the ark of safety. 

The apostles, especially Paul, understood and taught this 
stupendous truth, that we are delivered from hell by the Di- 
vine Personality of Jesus Christ entering to abide with us, 
and to transform us to his own glorious image. If the church 
had continued to live and move in the personal divine-natu- 
ral sphere of Jesus Christ, the history of the world would 
have been entirely different, and no Second Advent might 
have been necessary. But that such would not be the case, 
was foreseen and predicted. " Ye will not come unto me 
that ye might have life, ,> saith the Lord. 

They turned away from the Divine Man. They ceased to 
look to the Lord alone. They divided his divine nature and 
broke his unity in their souls, by the absurd figure of three 
persons. They perverted the truths of the Word by innu- 
merable false interpretations, and invented monstrous schemes 
of salvation. The proprium even captured the ecclesiastical 
spirit, and ran the machinery of the church for its own bene- 
fit and in its own manner. Thus the minds of men, the 
world of spirits, and even the external sphere of the ultimate 
heaven, became blocked up with dense clouds of evil and 
falsity, which entirely prevented the entrance of the personal 
sphere of Jesus Christ through the heavens into the human 
race. Therefore a Second Advent became imperative. 



WHAT NEED OF A SECOND COMING? 26 1 

The object of the First Advent was to lift up our Lord's 
human nature into oneness with the Divine. " If I be lifted 
up," etc. Such was the first at-one-ment — the union of the 
Son with the Father. The movement was ascending. The 
movement of the Second Advent is altogether descending. 
It is a movement from centres to circumferences, from pri- 
mates to ultimates. It is a second at-one-ment; but it will be 
the at-one-ment of the Lord with his church. He will enter 
the body of Humanity from within, and change the likeness 
of our vile corporate body into the likeness of his glorious 
body, so that we shall be one with Him, even as He is one 
with the Father. 

The Second Advent being a descending movement from 
within, can only be effected by a successive opening of the 
interior degrees down into the natural. When He enters our 
celestial degree, He vivifies remains, awakens the affection 
for truth, and fires us with the heavenly spirit of charity. 
When He enters the spiritual degree He illumines the under- 
standing, unfolds the spiritual sense of the Word, restoring tire 
genuine doctrines of heaven and making spiritual conjunction 
with Him again possible. When He enters the natural de- 
gree, He will cast out devils, He will heal the sick, He will 
raise the dead, He will redeem our bodies, He will reorganize 
society, He will establish his church in ultimates. The hopes 
and dreams of Christian perfection entertained by Catholic 
mystics, Quakers, and Methodists, will pale into insignifi- 
cance before the transcendent reality, now rapidly maturing, 
of Christ manifested in the souls and the bodies of his children. 

I would gladly linger long on this glorious theme ; but I 
must proceed to the consideration of your second question. 
You say that some spiritist has recently published a very plau- 
sible but subtle little book, purporting to come from Sweden- 



262 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

borg, in which he denies some of the fundamental doctrines 
of the church ; and you ask, " Why are all the voices of Spir- 
itism so uniform in their declarations of no evil, no Saviour, 
continuity, and a materialistic presence of spirits ?" 

Chiefly because the world of spirits is not separated from 
the world of nature by a discrete degree. It is in the same 
natural degree as ourselves, but an interior-natural, generally 
invisible and inaudible to us. It is a sphere of judgment and 
progression, and both good and evil spirits are perfectly satis- 
fied with their progress. The good are being divested of 
discordant evils and falsities ; they are submissive and teach- 
able, and entirely out of the sphere of governing or teaching. 
That is the reason we so seldom hear from them. The evil 
are being divested of disagreeable goods and truths, and get- 
ting more and more into their interior loves and delights. 
They call evil good, and the false true; are thoroughly ma- 
terialistic, conscious of no evil, feel no need of a Saviour, 
love to rule and to teach, and are generally unreliable and 
not to be trusted. 

The utter uselessness, if not absolute falsity, of all the 
teachings of spiritism, will become more and more apparent. 
There is no genuine truth outside of the personal sphere of 
the Lord Jesus Christ and his Divine Word. The abundant 
spiritual communications which await us in the future from 
both spirits and angels, will flow down to us only from the 
personal sphere of the Lord and his Word, and it will be the 
genuine communion of the saints in heaven with the saints 
on earth. It will unfold itself in the future ; we have nothing 
now but its faint beginnings. It will be from the Lord and 
in the Lord ; and we will only feel and know it as we stand 
in the new proprium which is made from the flesh and blood 
of Jesus Christ. Yours truly, W. H. H. 



LETTER XXXIV. 



THE OPENING OF DEGREES.— THE NEW ERA.— RETICENCE 
OR REVELATION? 



M 



' Y DEAR FRIEND : — Professional work, some sickness, 
and much correspondence have prevented me from 
sooner answering your very interesting communication. 
It is well also not to answer such letters too soon, but to let the 
subject-matter lie in the mind for repeated and successively 
more mature consideration. I have looked earnestly to the 
Lord for what I should say in response ; and if what I say 
should prove incomplete and unsatisfactory, it will be because 
I have not waited patiently and long enough for that perception 
of truth which comes only from within. 

The Lord Jesus Christ is descending from primates to ulti- 
mates, moving from centres to circumferences, manifesting 
Himself as the Alpha and Omega, opening the celestial, spirit- 
ual, and natural degrees of the human mind, and thus entering 
the general Body of Humanity with his personal atmospheres, 
to dramatize his living Word upon the hearts and minds of 
men, to establish a New Church (the New Jerusalem) according 
to the form and order of heaven, and from thence as a centre 
to reorganize human society, and reconstitute the very elements 
of nature. It may take centuries to finish this work, but it 
has begun. 

If you had given your strongest intellectual assent to this 
great universal truth which involves innumerable and wonder- 
ful particular truths ; if you had brought additional and pow- 

263 



264 • LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

erful arguments from the Word and from Swedenborg, throwing 
an increasing light upon a subject already " dark with excessive 
light, " as Milton says of the skirts of the Almighty ; it would 
have afforded us pleasure and satisfaction. But you have done 
something which is far more acceptable to " those who know 
the Lord from within, and not alone from without," as you 
have happily phrased it. You increase the light of intellectual 
truth, by adding to it the glowing warmth of your spiritual 
experiences. It is the voice of the heart we hear in the words 
of your letter; the sound of the Lord moving among the 
celestial things of life. " Out of the abundance of the heart, 
the mouth speaketh." "I will give them a heart to know 
me, that I am the Lord," etc. 

I will quote a few sentences from your letter to serve as a 
text or basis of some suggestions, which press earnestly upon 
my mind for utterance. 

" My experiences so far confirm every word that you and 
G. W. C. have said. I know that these new phenomena are 
the descent of our Lord into the ultimates of humanity." 

"Little by little during the last two years I have been called 
to give up one thing after another, until now I feel that I have 
given up all, and all that I am is of the Lord. You well know 
what it costs. The old man dies hard, and with me it has 
been a lingering death ; for I have been influenced more or 
less by the sphere of doubt and skepticism which pervades the 
external New Church." 

"Are there any Newchurchmen this way to whom I may 
speak of my experiences freely ? The day may come, and I 
know not how soon, when it will be necessary for me to speak 
more openly to my brother ministers. The Lord will open 
the way and give the word." 

A quotation also from your friend's letter to you which you 



OPENING OF THE MIND'S DEGREES. 265 

have kindly permitted me to see, will have a direct bearing 
upon what I am going to say. 

" Where the consciousness of interior things is dim and 
partial, a person will depend in some measure upon others as 
* authority.' To cease to do so, requires the opening of the 
most interior or celestial degree of life in man. Those who 
have been introduced through self-denial and soul-discipline 
to that sphere of conscious life, are not under the necessity of 
learning from without : they perceive divine truth from within. 
It shines in their hearts. They are ' taught of God.' " 

It is an unquestionable fact that for many years there has 
been going on within the limits of our New-Church organiza- 
tion, a deep and quiet movement — a secret but strong revival 
or awakening, a struggle for a more interior life, and a more 
thorough realization of the presence of Christ in the soul. 
These spiritual states were frequently suppressed from fear of 
" enthusiastic spirits " in the interior, or from the fear of being 
classed with " spiritists " in the exterior. Imperfect and par- 
tial, they were misunderstood even by those who felt them, 
and utterly uncomprehended and misrepresented by those who 
did not feel them. 

This class of phenomena is on the increase. The forms 
and manifestations are various, but the chief fact is the de- 
velopment of a higher spiritual life, not through the influence 
of church associations or even the study of Swedenborg, but 
by coming into personal rapport with the descending atmos- 
pheres of the Divine Humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
The Spirit of the Lord is brooding over the abysses of the 
celestial degree of human life, and is creating that light within 
— that truth which flows from good — and which will be found 
to correspond with that light from without which leads to good, 
23 



266 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

and be the clearest confirmation attainable of the genuineness 
of Swedenborg's mission and teaching. 

This vivification of Remains is truly the work of the Lord 
alone, and not the work of spirits or men. Its first element 
is conviction of sin, the realization of the perpetual and in- 
eradicable hell within us, and a divine dissatisfaction with the 
righteousness of the scribes and pharisees in which we had 
hitherto lived in peace. Its stages are marked by self-revela- 
tions, temptations, vastations, despairs, self-loathings, self- 
renunciations. It breaks up the influence of father and mo- 
ther, of brother and sister, and of the whole world upon us, 
and leaves us alone with Christ. How cold, calm, and dead 
is the spiritual arctic region of the mind with its perpetual 
snow, sunshine, and desolation, in comparison with the earth- 
quakes, tornadoes, thunder-storms, and tempests of rain, which 
agitate and yet fructify the celestial tropics of the soul ! 

The Lord is always the same, unchangeable, immovable. 
He goes or comes to us according to the closure or opening 
of the various degrees of the mind. If the natural degree 
only is opened, we know Him only naturally, that is, scien- 
tifically and historically. If the rational degree is opened, 
we know Him rationally and philosophically ; He begins to 
be to us the key which unlocks the mysteries of the universe. 
If the spiritual degree is opened, He becomes through the 
Word the genuine light of our understanding. If the celestial 
degree is opened, He becomes the central fire of life to us, 
and we feel and know Him in all things. One or more of the 
lower degrees may be opened and the celestial degree may re- 
main closed ; but if the celestial degree be opened, the Lord 
flows through it into all the lower degrees, and reconstructs 
and rearranges the whole man from centre to circumference 
by the laws of influx and correspondence. 



OPENING OF THE MIND'S DEGREES. 267 

The opening of the celestial degree will be attended with 
innumerable phenomena according to the organic conditions 
and spiritual receptivities of the subject. Celestial percep- 
tions, spiritual insights, rational illuminations, opening of the 
spiritual senses, must and will occur in various degrees and to 
different extents. The phenomena will be exceedingly inter- 
esting and exceedingly puzzling, leading no doubt to innumer- 
able false assumptions and premature utterances. We may be 
sure of two things : 1st, That these phenomena can never 
have any universal value like the writings of Swedenborg, be- 
cause they must always be individual expressions and experi- 
ences, varying infinitely with the development or evolution of 
each separate spiritual life. 2d, That they cannot furnish the 
basis of any organization in the earth-life. For an orderly 
ultimation the celestial must be inserted or implanted in the 
spiritual, the spiritual in the rational, and the rational in the 
natural. A new and true ultimate will no doubt be finally 
established, and it will probably be something never heard, 
thought, or dreamed of by anybody in the world. That is 
the Lord's work and not ours ; and we can contribute nothing 
to it except by bringing our individual lives into perfect sub- 
mission to the Lord's will. 

It is plainly our duty to receive these phenomena as they 
are unfolded from within, in the most friendly, inquiring, and 
rational spirit, and to judge them candidly and thoroughly by 
Swedenborg and the Word ; and not to ignore them or attempt 
to conceal or suppress them by the " conspiracy of silence," 
shutting our eyes and stopping our ears against them, as the 
majority of our New-Church ministers and people seem in- 
clined to do. Our motto should always be: "Liberty for 
each and charity for all." But alas ! the slightest apparent 



268 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

deviation from the rules of faith and order laid down by the 
early leaders of the Church, seems to excite in the breast of 
some Newchurchmen that uncharitable spirit manifested by 
the disciples, when they said to our Lord, " and we forbade 
him, because he followeth not us." We are therefore justi- 
fied in inquiring how far a man, having the utmost courage 
of his convictions, but uniting the wisdom of the serpent with 
the harmlessness of the dove, may still be silent or reticent 
about these phenomena in harmony with the law of the divine 
concealments. 

Our Lord once asked his disciples what was the public opin- 
ion regarding Himself. (Matt. xvi. 13-20.) They answered 
that the people thought He was John the Baptist, or Elias, or 
Jeremiah, or one of the old prophets risen from the dead. 
The Divine influx into the old unbroken mold of Jewish 
thought, created the impression that He was sent to revive 
and reanimate the old forms and forces of the Jewish religion. 
" But whom say ye that I am ? M Peter answered, " Thou art 
the Christ, the Son of the living God." Upon the rock of 
this truth, God manifest in the flesh, our Lord then declares 
that He will build his church — something entirely different 
from and superior to the Jewish religion. And now comes an 
astounding occurrence. Although knowing that the people 
were in a general state of ignorance or delusion regarding 
Him, and that Peter had just expressed the genuine truth of 
the matter, He deliberately perpetuates the public misappre- 
hension of divine things, and charges his disciples to "tell no 
man that He was Jesus the Christ." 

We cannot doubt that the laws of divine withholding and 
divine concealment are dictated by infinite wisdom and mercy. 
When men would deny, pervert, or destroy the true Christ 



OPENING OF THE MIND'S DEGREES. 269 

within themselves, He is withdrawn or concealed from them, 
and they are permitted to imagine that they see and feel 
God in the galvanizations and perpetuations of old forms of 
thought and conduct. But how did Peter arrive at such a 
different conception of Jesus ? It was not revealed to him 
by flesh and blood, for celestial truths, the fountain-heads of 
all other truths, are not discoverable by the will and the un- 
derstanding of man. They are not the truths of revelation that 
lead to good through the understanding ; but they are truths 
which flow from good through the heart. (See A. C. 5804-6.) 
It is the Father which is in heaven who reveals them to us. 
They come to us by way of the new will when the old will 
is dead or quiescent. Those who are combating evils from 
truths which lead to good, cannot always comprehend or re- 
ceive these more interior truths that flow from good. 

Now, my dear friend, God manifested in the spiritual sense 
of the Word, is not the rock upon which the church of Jesus 
Christ is to be built. Many of our New-Church people seem 
to think so, but it is a terrible delusion. No resurrected or 
unfolded Elias or Jeremiah will satisfy the divine heart-in- 
stincts of the celestiial age dawning upon us. The Father 
will reveal to the Peter of the New Church, that Jesus Christ 
is not only the spiritual truth made known to us through Swe- 
denborg, but that He is the Divine Man, having all power in 
heaven and earth, entering (to abide) into all the degrees of 
men and nature \ and this is the divine truth upon which the 
church of the New Jerusalem will be established. And this 
truth will be concealed from the men of the age and the 
men of the church, so far as may be necessary or salutary, 
until the divine preparations for its general reception are 
perfected. 
23* 



27O LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

Now what shall we do about it ? — we who have felt the Di- 
vine Father moving upon our hearts, until He has revealed 
Himself to us, not only as a spiritual Sun shining in the Word, 
but as God manifest in the flesh — a living Presence in us, 
having all power over our affections, thoughts, appetites, and 
desires ; what must we do about it ? Let us look again to 
the Word for light. 

Our Lord took his three disciples — representing the love, 
faith, and obedience of the church — into a high mountain 
apart, introducing them into a celestial sphere of affection, 
and opening their spiritual eyes, so that they saw Him in a 
glorified form, " his face shining like the sun and his garment 
white as the light," conversing with Moses and Elias who 
represented the Word as revealed to man. When the vision 
passed away, these disciples knew by the evidence of their 
own senses, that the man Jesus Christ standing before them, 
apparently only a man like themselves, was interiorly the 
Living Word and the very God of the universe. And yet 
this transcendent truth was concealed from the church and 
the world for a time. They were solemnly charged to tell the 
vision to no man until the Son of Man* was risen from the 
dead. It was plainly because preparation had not been made 
in the minds of men, or planes established in them for the 
reception of such a sublime and universal truth. 

This narrative is pregnant with meaning for you and all of 
us. In vain will we tell the heavenly visions we have seen, 
the wonderful truths we have discovered, the high states apart 
into which we have entered, and the tabernacling of the Liv- 
ing Word in our souls, except to those in whom the Son of 
Man has risen from the dead. And instead of telling these 
interior things to people who are not ready to receive them, 



OPENING OF THE MIND'S DEGREES. 27 1 

and who would perhaps reject and deride them, had we not 
better preach to them the resurrection from the dead, as the 
only process by which they can be led to feel what we have 
felt, and to believe what we believe ? 

Ah ! it is well for us to question one with another what 
this rising from the dead may mean. It is the death of the 
carnal nature, the subjugation of the selfhood, the casting out 
of the old proprium : it is the resurrection of the Christ in 
ourselves, of the new proprium discreted from his flesh and 
blood, of a new life of which in the old proprium we had 
not the slightest conception. Correspondences and spiritual 
truths from the Word are only beautiful sports of the imagi- 
nation, unless they lead to conviction of sin, contrition, con- 
fession, humiliation, repentance, self-loathing, self-renuncia- 
tion, despair, and death. This is the only path that leads up 
into the mountain apart, where Christ is transfigured and 
seen in his glory. Preach their own resurrection from the 
dead to your people, preach the birth and growth and life 
of Christ in their own souls ; and in proportion as the old 
man dies in them and the new man is created " in righteous- 
ness and true holiness," will they comprehend the Second 
Coming of the Lord, not only in the intellectual sphere of 
the mind as a spiritual light, but as a personal entrance into 
the Body of Humanity, and into the heart and blood and 
muscles and flesh and bones of our daily life. 

The nature and extent of the reticence and circumspection 
to be employed in the enunciation of truth, must vary im- 
mensely with the individual, the uses, and the conditions. 
What one person may declare with propriety, another cannot. 
The church is not a debating society for the discussion of 
truths, nor a philosophical association for their discovery. It 



272 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

is based upon revelation, and its mission is to assert and to 
confirm. The atmosphere of doubt, debate, and collision 
would be uncongenial, perhaps inimical, to the atmosphere 
of acknowledgment, worship, and love of God. The things 
of God and the things of Caesar must be kept separate, and 
each must have its due. The man who is truly dead to self 
and consecrated to God, may safely trust the Divine Provi- 
dence to lead him through all the difficult and delicate ques- 
tions which may here arise. 

How can genuine liberty and rationality be enjoyed in any 
association, religious or otherwise, which is governed by the 
principles that actuate society in the present condition of the 
world ? Suppressions of opinion, surrender of will, compro- 
mises expressed or not, accommodations, adaptations, reti- 
cences, are inevitably more or less necessary to the mainte- 
nance of any organization at all. And yet in such states men 
can neither clearly see the truth nor honestly live it. We 
are compelled to pass through death and the judgment, 
whereby our external life is entirely broken up and put away, 
in order that the internal may come forth, utter itself in per- 
fect freedom, and choose its own fixed conditions. 

Now what Swedenborg describes as happening to every one 
in the world of spirits, is about to happen to every institu- 
tional form of human life. "It is the sunset hour of the 
world.' ' The night of death and judgment approaches. 
Society is about to die ; governments are about to perish ; 
churches are about to dissolve. Men do not believe it be- 
cause they do not see any adequate causes to produce such 
stupendous results. They will be gradually, very gradually, 
effected by the conscious opening of the interior degrees of 
life. Unless the Lord was to graduate and moderate the 



OPENING OF THE MIND'S DEGREES. 2J$ 

spiritual forces now inflowing into the world, all our social 
and ecclesiastical systems would explode with a rapidity and 
violence which would produce a perfect chaos. No flesh 
could be saved. Were the conscious interior life of the sexes, 
for instance, suddenly opened in all people, as it already is 
in a few, the institution of marriage, the palladium of human 
life, would undergo such revolutions as to endanger the very 
existence of the race. 

When the celestial degree is opened in those who have ex- 
perienced the death of the old proprium, they will enter into 
states of perception of truth, incomprehensible to spiritual or 
natural men ; but will have no desire to speak of them, and a 
genuine aversion to teaching or preaching them. " What is 
the use of it? " they say. "Nothing can be done from ex- 
ternal stand-points. The Lord is moving from within, and 
will bring everything to pass in his own way and his own 
time. When the interiors are opened, men will see things 
intuitively and without instruction.' ' 

The unfolding of our interior states or even our interior 
convictions to others, must be governed with circumspec- 
tion and regulated by common sense. The reticence which 
might be praiseworthy in you, might be blamable in me. 
You minister to the spiritual wants of a mixed, heterogene- 
ous congregation, coming into contact with their personal 
spheres. To perform your uses toward them, you must accom- 
modate yourself to their states and conditions, being careful 
not to repel, or unsettle, or mystify them by things which 
they are not ready to receive and perhaps not able to com- 
prehend. You can do them most good by working in the 
sphere of the affections ; and you can do that to the best 

S 



274 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

advantage from the stand-point of cherished truths, even 

apparent truths, with which they are already acquainted. 

Teach them to do the will of the Lord, and they will come 

spontaneously after awhile to know of his doctrines. 

Yours truly, 

W. H. H. 



LETTER XXXV. 

ON SOME OBSCURE PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE. 

MY DEAR FRIEND : — I have had several inquiries made 
of me lately, as to the true meaning of certain passages 
in the Bible. I propose to answer four of these in- 
quiries, one of them made by yourself, in the present letter. 
Two of them relate to passages from the Word, the other two 
to passages from the Acts and from Romans respectively. 
The Scriptures include all the sacred writings bound up in 
our Bible. The Word, in the New- Church sense, consists of 
those books only which contain a spiritual meaning within 
the letter. The Word contains spiritual truths clothed in 
natural forms. The sacred writings outside of the Word con- 
tain only the natural conceptions of spiritual truth formed by 
those who lived at the time of its enunciation. This idea is 
important to a clear comprehension of the difference between 
the Old Church and the New. The New Church is being 
built upon the words of the Master only ; the Old Church was 
built upon the interpretation which the disciples put upon the 
words of the Master. This interpretation, often crude, im- 
perfect, immature, and contradictory, has a supreme authority 
in the Old Church, which is repudiated in the New. 

You refer me to the tenth chapter of Daniel — and a very 
wonderful one it is — and to verse thirteen, and ask we why the 
prince of Persia withstood the Divine influx for one and twenty 
days, until Michael came to the Lord's assistance; when yet 

275 



276 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

Swedenborg gives the prince of Persia a very high signification 
of spiritual and intellectual truth. 

Two thoughts occur to me in this connection. One is the 
relation to opposites which exists in all the Divine writings. 
Everything which relates to good, relates also to evil ; every- 
thing which relates to truth, relates also to falsity. Fire may 
mean the divine love which comes down from heaven and 
melts our hearts into corresponding love and tenderness ; or 
it may mean the fire of evil passion, which is at once the life 
and the torment of hell. Mountain is the mountain of holiness 
where the Lord reigns supreme in us ; but it is also the moun- 
tain of self-love, in the groves of which we worship our own 
idols. The lion is the lion of the tribe of Judah ; but he is 
also the roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. So the 
prince of Persia has a good and evil signification to be deter- 
mined by the context — remembering the fundamental truth, 
that persons and places in the Word have no individual or 
local significance, but are strictly representative of spiritual 
states and principles. 

But there is another way of looking at your difficulty, and 
it is one of great importance. Let the prince of Persia repre- 
sent the very highest forms of angelic intelligence, and yet 
under certain conditions he would be ready to withstand the 
Lord and resist his influence. See A. C. 4287, where we are 
taught that the Lord assumed all evil states, from those in the 
hells even up to those of the angels : and again, see A. C. 
4295-4307, where it is affirmed that the Lord fought in 
temptations with the whole angelic heaven, and that these 
temptations were the inmost of all, because the angels act 
only into ends and that with surpassing subtlety. Our Lord's 
bitterest tears are at the graves of his friends, and his keenest 
cry of anguish is over the state of his own Jerusalem. 



SOME OBSCURE TEXTS EXPLAINED. 2*]*] 

Yes, my friend, it is our religious proprium which most 
strenuously resists the coming of the Lord at the present day. 
It is our very faith and zeal and goodness, our loyalty to the 
church and the Word, our reverence for saints and martyrs 
and teachers, all so good in themselves, that make us turn 
away from the personal advent of the Divine Man, and re- 
ject the doctrines of the celestial life as something new and 
strange, or far off and impracticable. 

Please notice that the prince of Persia withstood the heav- 
enly influence " one and twenty days," and that Daniel 
mourned and fasted exactly the same length of time. (vs. 
2, 3.) These represent the same states on the interior and 
the exterior planes. Men mourn and fast, or are in states of 
temptation, darkness, and vastation, when the Bridegroom is 
not with them ; and it is in these same states in an interior 
degree, that they resist or withstand the coming of the Lord 
— alas ! not knowing who He is or how He comes. 

Some one wants more light upon the statement, that, if a 
man hate not his father and mother and wife and brethren 
and sisters, he cannot be the Lord's disciple. (Luke xiv. 26.) 
The common instincts of mankind revolt against the literal 
interpretation of this passage. No one believes it to be liter- 
ally true. Even when heresy was treated as a sin and a 
crime, the persecuting church could never bring its wildest 
devotees to the point of abjuring all natural human affections 
even to the extremity of hate. Christians have conjectured 
that in some way or other it means that the evil things 
within ourselves are to be put away and rejected ; but the 
philosophy of Swedenborg alone gives us clear and satisfac- 
tory information on the subject. 

The relationships above mentioned are the spiritual states 
24 



278 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

of the old proprium or selfhood. These states are exceed- 
ingly numerous and varied, and they bear relations to each 
other corresponding to the relationships of human kindred. 
Our father and mother are the interior states of the evil and 
false which have molded our characters, begotten us as it 
were, and brought us to our present stand-point. The w T ife of 
the old proprium is the state of evil affections which corre- 
sponds, and is married as it were, to the falsities of the indi- 
vidual understanding. Our children are the other succeeding 
states which will surely follow in us, as the legitimate fruits 
and offspring of our present unregenerate conditions. Our 
sisters and brethren are all the collateral evils and falsities 
born of the same parents, and of one blood and spirit with us 
in our evil state. Our "own life" which we are to lay 
down, is the love of self and the world, which is the root of 
all evils, and of which all these related evils and falsities are 
only so many manifestations. This is a picture of the pro- 
prium or selfhood of the unregenerate man, of that carnal 
mind which is "enmity against God." Observe that Paul 
does not say the carnal mind is at enmity with God, for that 
might terminate; but its very essence, its definition, is "en- 
mity against God." 

Now these states of our carnal life are not only to be de- 
nounced as evil and false, and to be repudiated and put away, 
but they are to be hated. A man may resist and renounce 
an evil thing, and yet love it and sigh for it. Our Lord con- 
templates a radical, total revolution in the life and character 
of his disciples. Our old states, our self-importance, our 
ambitions and vanities, our lusts and follies, our covetousness, 
our falsehoods, our pretensions, our sins of omission and com- 
mission, are not only to be cast off, but to be loathed and 



SOME OBSCURE TEXTS EXPLAINED. 2*]Q 

hated to the bitter end. It is only a radical change in the 
will, in the vital principle, which can do that. Love is at- 
traction ; hatred is repulsion. The evil repel the Lord and 
the angels from themselves. Just in proportion as we repel 
the old selfhood from us, will we be brought into rapport 
with the Lord and the heavens. Thus can we become his 
disciples, and learn of Him, who is "meek and lowly in 
heart." 

A dear little New-Church woman who has been emanci- 
pated from the bondage of the dreadful doctrine of predes- 
tination, desires to help her friends out of the same ; and 
she wants to know how I interpret the ninth chapter of Ro- 
mans, which is considered the impregnable stronghold of that 
dogma. I do not interpret it at all, for it is no portion of 
the Word of God, although it stands among the sacred writ- 
ings. I criticise and judge it by my reason and common 
sense, just as I would criticise and judge a chapter of Augus- 
tine, or Luther, or Wesley. Paul's ideas are only more inter- 
esting than theirs, because he lived in the very time of the 
Incarnation, and was personally acquainted with those who 
walked and wrought with Jesus. 

It is commonly supposed that the apostles were imbued 
with wisdom and power from on high to see the genuine 
truths of theology, and preach them to the world ; and that 
therefore their words are words of unquestionable spiritual 
authority. This is a mistake. Their spiritual illumination 
was graduated according to their own states of regeneration. 
They understood only what they were organically capable 
of understanding, and they understood exceedingly little in 
comparison with the accumulated knowledge and cultivated 
thought of the present day. They were essentially Jewish, 



280 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

external, sensuous, legal. Paul, the most learned and pre- 
tentious of them all, darkened with his crude metaphysics the 
beautiful simplicity of Christ's theology. The evolution of the 
church and the development of doctrine took place according 
to the laws of the human mind ; and the evolution and de- 
velopment from the very beginning receded from the genuine 
truth instead of approaching it. The Lamb " slain from the 
foundation of the world, 7 ' means that fhe doctrine of the 
divine love in the Divine Humanity was misunderstood and 
rejected from the initiament of the church. 

Paul judaized the Christian doctrine. He had some vague 
idea that the Old Testament had a spiritual meaning, but he 
had no key to it ; and his view of the relation between the 
mission of Christ and the Jewish sacrifices, was exceedingly 
crude and incorrect. He understood the new life — the ex- 
periences of the soul in its struggle against evil — far better 
than he did the new doctrine. The good element of the 
church, John, remained until Christ came again. The truth 
element, represented by Peter, was soon perverted and cruci- 
fied, head downward. If Paul's conception of God had risen 
above the Jehovah of the Jews, he would have known that 
God hardens no man's heart, and that Pharaoh hardened his 
own heart by his persistent disobedience of the divine com- 
mands. How utterly alien to the doctrine and spirit of Christ 
are Paul's words in this chapter ! 

" What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his 
power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of 
wrath fitted to destruction : 

"And that He might make known the riches of his glory on 
the vessels of mercy, which He had afore prepared unto glory : 

"Even us, whom He hath called" etc. 



SOME OBSCURE TEXTS EXPLAINED. 28 1 

What but the most pitiable and trembling subserviency to a 
supposed infallible authority, could have made rational beings 
accept this miserable conception of the true God as gospel 
truth ? 

But in their predestinarian interpretation of this chapter, 
theologians have out-Pauled Paul, or gone a long way ahead 
of him. It is clear to me that Paul, here at least, had no 
intention of teaching that men are foreordained to be good 
or evil, and cannot possibly evade their final destiny. I give 
him credit for presenting a far more rational and beautiful 
idea. He is anticipating objections that might be raised 
against the facts, that God selected Abraham for a great 
mission, that He preferred Jacob to Esau for reasons of his 
own, that He made of the Jews a peculiar and chosen people, 
and that He is now ready of his own good will to extend his 
blessings to the Gentiles also ; and that it is folly for any man 
to dispute or resist his will. He says virtually, that the organ- 
ization of this universe containing such infinite harmony in 
infinite variety, is such a stupendous affair, that one great 
intelligence must preside, like the potter making his vessels, 
who foresees, provides, arranges, and consummates his work 
according to his own divine idea. In other words, men and 
nations are created for specific uses, of necessity without their 
knowledge or consent ; but these are foreseen and ordained 
by infinite wisdom and mercy, and all will find the true har- 
mony and happiness of life in their just performance. This 
approaches Swedenborg's doctrine of the Grand Man : that 
in heaven there are degrees of goodness and wisdom requiring 
an infinite variety of forms for their manifestation ; that those 
represented by hair and bones and teeth and nails, are incor- 
porated into the great body of spiritual uses, along with the 
24 * 



282 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

greater and nobler vessels and organs ; so that high and low, 
rich and poor, wise and simple, etc., are forever wrought into 
a happy and resplendent unit, as of a single being. 

Paul gives us the true reason why every man should be 
perfectly and eternally contented with his lot ; why he should 
accept his own specific mission (for every man has one, and 
was predestinated to a definite niche in heaven), and fulfill 
his calling, high or low, small or great, without repining at 
Providence. In foreseeing, providing for, and evolving the 
universe, which is a complex organism of concurrent and 
harmonious uses, it was necessary that God should appoint 
each individual his form, station, and function ; and the evils 
of the universe have sprung from the selfishness, dissatisfaction, 
and disobedience of the human proprium, complaining of its 
condition, envying or assailing the functions of others, and 
refusing to consider itself as a mere atom whose real life and 
happiness are only to be found in its perfect adjustment to 
the service and happiness of all the rest. 

I venture to say, that if Paul had evolved and elaborated 
his own idea more fully, he would have given us something 
nearer to the sublime conceptions of the New-Church philos- 
ophy, than to that dogma of predestination which has cast 
such a painful and hideous shadow over a considerable por- 
tion of the Christian world. 

Another lady seems to think that Stephen seeing the heav- 
ens opened and " the Son of Man standing at the right hand 
of God," is some sort of proof of the existence of at least two 
persons in the Trinity. Now, what did Stephen really see? 
It must have been either an objective reality independent of 
himself, or a spiritual vision projected from his own mind 



SOME OBSCURE TEXTS EXPLAINED. 283 

and expressive of his own conceptions of truth. Can the In- 
finite Being ever stand before any finite creature as an objec- 
tive reality subject to his inspection ? It is, of course, utterly 
impossible. No man hath at any time either heard his voice 
or seen his shape. Only the Son hath revealed Him, and in 
the Son alone do we see Him. Therefore Stephen's vision 
was the projection of his own thought, which, like that of 
all the apostles and disciples at that time, was very immature 
and imperfect. Our Lord had accommodated Himself to the 
states of men and the limitations of time and space, and they 
were permitted, as a temporary or provisional necessity, to 
conceive of Him as a threefold Being under the names of 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, until the fullness of time when 
He would return again, open his Divine Word, and reveal 
Himself to his children as the Divine Man, one in person and 
in spirit. 

Swedenborg's interpretation of the Word, given to him 
from heaven, will disperse all illusions, reconcile all discrep- 
ancies, solve all difficulties, and give us the genuine truth. 

Yours truly, 

W. H. H. 



LETTER XXXVI. 

SHALL WE STAY IN THE OLD CHURCH ?— MARRYING 
OUTSIDE OF THE NEW CHURCH— HOW SHALL WE 
BE SAVED? 

MY DEAR MADAM : — A great many people are asking 
the questions you have propounded ; and I give you 
answers which seem rational to me, but I beg you to 
let them have no authoritative weight with you, except as you 
find them to harmonize with the teachings of Swedenborg 
and the Word. 

You are an isolated receiver of the heavenly doctrines, with 
very uncongenial surroundings. You have been and still are 
a member of the Episcopal Church ; but you complain that 
you experience no growth of spiritual life in its communion, 
that it has become a burden to you ; and what must you do 
about it? 

That perfect, beautiful, and harmonious adjustment of in- 
ternal and external relations which will make all things con- 
genial to us, is only to be found in heaven. It is the ideal 
after which we are all consciously or unconsciously striving ; 
but as the issu£ depends upon others as well as upon ourselves, 
our aspirations are not likely to be gratified until the redemp- 
tion of society from its present wild beast state into the truly 
human form, has been considerably advanced. In the mean- 
time, however, is not the deep sigh for congeniality very fre- 
quently the mere cry of the old proprium for something which 

will make it comfortable and happy, without any genuine re- 

284 



SHALL WE STAY IN THE OLD CHURCH? 285 

gard to the elevation and purification of our own states or 
those of others ? Would it not be well to ignore that ques- 
tion of congeniality altogether, and to substitute the question 
of duty, and thus accommodate ourselves in all true and lov- 
ing ways to the states of those around us, and seek our hap- 
piness, not in the consociation of congenial spirits (see Luke 
vi. 31-34), but in the society of those to whom we can render 
even the least domestic, social, or religious use ? 

Whether a Newchurchman should attend the services of 
the Old Church or not, depends upon his own spiritual con- 
dition. The more thoroughly he is in externals, the more 
readily will he believe that the Sabbath cannot be duly kept 
without a willing and reverential attendance on some divine 
service ; and if there is no church of his own faith accessible, 
he will congratulate himself that he is cultivating a liberal 
spirit of charity toward his neighbor, by joining him in the 
public worship of God. He will urge, and with great reason, 
that external forms and ordinances are necessary to the main- 
tenance and orderly ultimation of the spiritual life. The 
church, any church — Methodist chapel, Jewish synagogue, 
Turkish mosque, Hindu temple, Chinese pagoda, Catholic 
cathedral — is necessary to the instruction, peace, order, and 
happiness of society. We pass through a whole series of ap- 
parent truths before we reach genuine truths ; and it is right 
and proper to recognize the uses of imperfect systems of truth 
and forms of worship, until better and higher things can be 
attained. 

The Newchurchman who thinks from external stand-points, 
can easily persuade himself that it is a good thing to keep the 
Sabbath by going to church, that he thus sets a good example 
to others, and contributes his mite to upholding one of the 



286 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

safeguards of respectable society. But he has very little in- 
terior perception if he supposes these things will contribute 
to the development of his own spiritual nature, or if, indeed, 
he is not aware that there is great danger that the atmosphere 
of an external and dead church, will drag him down to its 
own level of formalism and literalism. 

This question, like all others, must be determined on the 
principle of use. It is impossible for my friend G. W. C. to 
attend any church whatever. The interior states of all the 
people, minister included, are open to his perceptions, and 
are represented to him in correspondential forms. The con- 
sequence is, a bedlam, a pandemonium, a terrible confusion 
of sounds, colors, and odors, weeping and gnashing of teeth, 
contentions, mockeries, etc., etc., until he becomes so nau- 
seated, giddy, and stupefied that he is compelled to retire. 
The same effect is produced upon him by the mingled spheres 
of public assemblies for any purpose. His strange and long- 
continued and oft-repeated experiences prove how little inte- 
rior harmony or spiritual union there is in any of our re- 
ligious meetings, and how far we all are from the perfect 
order and peace of heavenly associations. It is no wonder 
that years of instruction, temptation, and vastation are gen- 
erally necessary in the world of spirits, to reduce our old pro- 
prium into sufficient subjection for us to be initiated into 
those stupendous gyres or harmonic movements of associated 
affection and thought, which make the life of heaven. 

It was humiliating and incredible to me many years ago, 
when I was in the New- Church ecclesiastical sphere, laboring 
to build up an external church, enjoying the Liturgy and 
even submitting to re-baptism in amiable deference to the 
opinions of respected friends — it was humiliating and in- 



SHALL WE STAY IN THE OLD CHURCH? 287 

credible, I say, to learn that G. W. C. found no particular 
difference between a New- Church assembly and an Old- 
Church one. It was interiorly equally discordant, equally 
actuated by the old proprium, equally remote from the per- 
fect order, peace, and beauty of heavenly worship. How 
could I do otherwise at that time, than think my friend G. 
W. C. was the victim of hallucinations and fantasies ? How 
long has it taken me to comprehend him, even in the partial 
degree that I do at present ! 

And now I will make a confession of my own experiences. 
After thorough trial of many years in both Old- and New- 
Church organizations, I can look back and see from far 
higher rational ground than I have hitherto occupied, that 
they were of no benefit whatever to the development of my 
spiritual nature ; that they rather deadened my conscience 
by satisfying me that I was engaged in obeying and worship- 
ing God in a most acceptable manner ; that they kept me in 
closed conditions, in the very mold and spirit of the old 
dragonistic affection and thought, and hindered me from 
knowing or feeling that higher life which at present no exter- 
nal organization can either hold or expound. 

It seems that people who are satisfied with the existing or- 
der of things, and who think that submission to all the social 
and ecclesiastical demands of the age is the life of religion, 
can seldom be let into those temptations and vastations which 
are absolutely necessary to break up the incrusted evils and 
falsities of old systems, and to let the light and life of heaven 
into their souls. They do not want to be brought into judg- 
ment, but to be left at ease in Zion. They shrink, not only 
from the putting away of the old proprium, but even from a 
knowledge of it. They love those external things which sup- 



288 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

press or conceal their interior natures, not only from others 
but from themselves. ( They have not realized the fact, that 
true worship is simply the love of the Lord and the neighbor 
manifested in the activities of life.y They cling to the moun- 
tains of Samaria or to the temple at Jerusalem, not under- 
standing the words of the Lord, "The hour cometh when ye 
shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship 
the Father." 

When, through the leadings of Divine Providence, I let go 
of all church forms and church influences, I was driven into 
the wilderness and passed through temptations and vastations, 
being with the wild beasts, until I was reduced to states of 
utter humiliation and despair. Nor did I get out of those 
hells by going back to church forms or church influences of 
any kind. That course I believe would have arrested the 
work of God in my soul. I was delivered by coming into 
the personal sphere of the Divine Man, who has now de- 
scended into ultimates, and has power over all flesh, and is 
ready to save from all sin every one who comes to Him and 
to Him alone for life and grace. Nor from the stand-points 
of this new life which has been continually growing in me 
for the last five years, do I feel the least necessity or the least 
desire to join in the external work of any ecclesiastical asso- 
ciation, except so far as the distribution of the Word and the 
dissemination of the heavenly doctrines are concerned. I 
have learned by my own individual experiences, that the 
Second Coming of the Lord will not take place through an 
organized church, but through the individual souls of men, 
from which as centres He will reorganize society and estab- 
lish the New Church in his own time and in his own way. 

Individual experiences are instructive and suggestive, but 
they should never be authoritative. We are living in a trail- 



SHALL WE STAY IN THE OLD CHURCH? 289 

sitional period, when there is no genuine church upon the 
earth except that which is ultimated in the good deeds of the 
daily life. There is nothing authoritative, because we are in 
the midst of the breaking up of all authorities, so that the 
Lord may establish his personal government among men. 
\ Every soul must discover its own duty, and do it without 
reference to other people.) 'The Lord leads us all differently, 
and by ways unknown to ourselves or others until we look 
back and see what He has done for us./ Consult your own 
conscience and reason ; analyze your motives fearlessly and 
profoundly ; act from the principle of use, and for the bene- 
fit of others ; look constantly to the Lord and his Word ; 
keep your heart always open to Him by faith and prayer ; 
try all things, prove all things, put charity always in advance 
of faith, and He will lead you aright. 

I think you experience no spiritual growth in the church 
because you look for it where it cannot be found. You 
would probably find it agreeable, instructive, and useful to 
attend church, if you divested it in your mind of all its old 
ecclesiastical prerogatives and prestige, and regarded it sim- 
ply as a social institution. You would then not expect much 
from it, and would cease to estimate your progress according 
to orthodox measures and methods. You would find your 
true religious life in the study of Swedenborg, in frequent 
communion with the Word, and in that personal rapport with 
the Lord Jesus Christ which is attained by faith and prayer. 
You would feel it manifested in you and through you by 
a growing love of truth for its own sake, and an ever-increas- 
ing desire to do good. A genuine spiritual life works from 
within outward, creates its own methods and establishes itself 
in its own ultimates. 

25 T 



29O LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

You next ask if it is ever advisable for a New-Church per- 
son to marry outside of the church. As I do not perceive the 
right of any external organization to call itself the Lord's 
New Church, your question practically amounts to this : Is it 
advisable for a receiver of the heavenly doctrines, who is en- 
deavoring to live the life they inculcate, to marry an unbeliever 
of those doctrines ? In the present transitional state of society, 
when the Old Church is dead and its successor not yet es- 
tablished, or at least is concealed from sight ; when so few 
true marriages are possible ; when so little is fixed or even 
fixable, I do not think it a matter of much importance. I do 
say, however, that(it is better to marry a liberal unbeliever, 
than any strong religionist of any branch of the Old Church ; 
for the former has already outgrown or outlived or unlearned 
many falsities which stand in the way of the latter, an<J is 
therefore really more receptive of the truths on which the new 
order will be based.* 

* A passage in Swedenborg (A. C. n. 8998) is often referred to by New- 
Church writers, as teaching that it is altogether wrong — yea, heinous as 
the angels view it — for a member of the nominal New Church to marry 
outside of its communion. The prohibitory clause (or rather, that which 
is so regarded) reads : " Marriages on earth between those of different re- 
ligions, are accounted in heaven as heinous." The mistake so often made 
here, lies in assuming that members of the organized New Church, be- 
cause they understand and interpret the Word differently from other Chris- 
tians, are therefore of a " different religion." This is not so. All who ac- 
cept Christianity, however differently they understand the Scriptures, are 
reckoned by Swedenborg as of one and the same religion. But Jews, 
Mahometans, Buddhists, Pagans — all who do not accept Christianity — 
have a different religion from Christians. Christians, therefore, should 
not enter into marriage with persons holding some different religion from 
the Christian. That this is Swedenborg's meaning, is plain from his own 



SHALL WE STAY IN THE OLD CHURCH? 29 1 

You say you have read with the utmost avidity and delight 
all I have written in the Independent. You acknowledge 
with your whole heart and mind the great truths enunciated 
by G. W. C. and myself concerning the Second Coming of 
the Lord. They have vivified and exhilarated your spiritual 
nature, and renovated your whole life ; and you want to know 
how and how far you can labor to impress them upon others. 
You can do very little in the matter, nor can we, nor can any 
man. The movement is from the heart or centre of the New 
Church, and is governed by the Lord alone. The circum- 
ferences may be in agitated and rapid motion, but the centres 
are in comparative rest and obscurity. Our views are quite 
incomprehensible to those who are unacquainted with the 
doctrines of Swedenborg. Even the majority of those who 
believe these doctrines will be very slow to receive our in- 
terpretations of them. They will be very much ignored or 
rejected by the present generation of Newchurchmen. It does 
not matter. The Lord directs the minutest things in the 
universe. The best way for us to cooperate with Him in 
instituting his church upon earth, is to open the doors of our 
hearts to Him, so that He can enter and abide with us. Our 
known influences fall incalculably short of those which are 
unknown, for every soul is a centre to which all other souls 
are circumferences. 

" What shall I do to be saved ? " you ask, indicating a pro- 
found dissatisfaction with the present state of the Christian 
life (of which your own is a fair example), and a heart-cry for 

references in this very number to A. C. 2049, 21 15, wherein he shows 
that, by those of a " different religion," or those "out of the church," he 
means " the Gentiles who have not the Word." 



292 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

something higher and better, and more in correspondence 
with the heavenly doctrines which we have been led to believe. 
Oh, that this heart-cry would burst from the lips of every New- 
churchman in the world ! An Oldchurchman would surely 
answer you in the words of Paul, "Believe on the Lord Jesus 
Christ, and thou shalt be saved" (Acts xvi. 31): or in the 
words of Peter, " Repent and be baptized" (Acts ii. 38.) A 
Newchurchman of the external type, would answer you very 
truly and beautifully in the words of our Lord Himself, "If 
thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. ' ' But there 
is a more interior and exhaustive definition of the plan of 
salvation, also in the words of our Lord, which I commend 
to your studious consideration. It is this : 

" Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and 
take up his cross and follow me. 

"For whosoever will save his life, shall lose it : but whoso- 
ever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel' } s, the same 
shall save it " — Mark viii. 34~5- 

To lose one's life for Christ's sake and the gospel's, is to 
give up our own will entirely, and to abstain from evils be- 
cause they are sins against the Lord and violations of his 
divine law. This goes away back of the keeping of the com- 
mandments, and strikes at the root of the matter, enabling us 
1 thereafter to keep the commandments in the right way, not 
from the interested motives of the old proprium or our own 
self-derived intelligence, but because we have abandoned the 
life of evil in will and in deed ; and the Lord's own life, the 
new proprium, is given to us, and flows in and enables the 
Lord Himself to live in us and work through us according to 
his own good pleasure. This is the life of the New Church. 

This is exceedingly distasteful to the natural man. The 



SHALL WE STAY IN THE OLD CHURCH? 293 

unregenerate Peter, clinging to the old proprium and savoring 
of the things of the world, does not understand that it is 
necessary to "suffer many things/ ' to be rejected of men and 
crucified and buried, before he can rise again. But that was 
the Lord's pathway to the new life, or his glorification; and 
it must be ours if we truly desire to follow Him and to be 
where He is. 

Yours truly, W. H. H. 

25* 



LETTER XXXVII. 

THE NEW MOVEMENT, OLD AS WELL AS NEW— THAT 
SKELETON IN THE NEW-CHURCH CLOSET. 



w 



Y DEAR FRIEND :— When you ask me, What is this 
New Movement? you ask me a question almost as 
formidable as an Oldchurchman would propound to 
you, if he said: " Now sit down a few minutes, my friend, 
and tell me what Swedenborg teaches.' ' You would not know 
where or how to begin, on account of the immensity of the 
subject. And besides, the man would have so much to unlearn 
and to forget before your ideas could be accepted or even 
comprehended by him, that the task would appear futile, and 
indeed almost always proves so, when some enthusiastic New- 
churchman endeavors to illumine the unprepared minds of his 
Old-Church friends. No man ever finds the truth until he 
seeks earnestly for it : and no man ever searches for that 
which he believes he holds already in his hand. No one is 
properly prepared to study Swedenborg, until he has discovered 
that his own past and present opinions are unfounded or un- 
tenable. 

Still more remote from the perceptions and comprehension 
of the natural man — of the Oldchurchman, the scientist, the 
spiritualist, and even the average Newchurchman — are the 
series of life-truths which are being revealed and the series of 
events which are being unfolded or evolved, the complex of 
which we have provisionally called the New Movement. Ap- 
parently, and on the surface, the very least of all religious 

294 



THE NE W MO VEMENT. 2g$ 

movements of the age, it is interiorly the largest and grandest 
in the world, for it is the centre and key to all others. If you 
were only curious after truth, I would refer you to a thorough 
study of Swedenborg as the best preparation for your final 
understanding of these things ; for it is only in the light of 
Swedenborg' s entire system that they can be clearly compre- 
hended by the understanding. But I know from my conver- 
sations and correspondence with you, that you are earnestly 
looking for the life of Christ in the soul, for the descent of the 
Lord and his angels into the daily lives and business of men ; 
and from that stand-point of affection, having been already 
initiated into the general principles of the New Church, you 
will be enabled to see and believe with the heart the wonderful 
things which are now rejected and ignored by the chief men 
of the church, mainly because they are " slow of heart to 
believe all that the prophets have spoken. " 

The New Movement is only a part and continuation of the 
movement already recognized in the New Church as the 
Second Coming of the Lord. It is the sequel and logical 
issue to Swedenborg' s mission, and yet it began before it. It 
is the Lord's work entirely. The Lord comes to the under- 
standing when it is filled with the light of truth from the 
opened Word. But this is only a preparatory or John the Bap- 
tist state ; and yet before John appeared the Lord was. The 
Lord comes into the heart as the Divine Love, when we yearn 
to live the life of the heavenly doctrines — which is not a good 
Christian life as hitherto understood — but is the life of Christ 
Himself in the redeemed Body of Humanity. 

As the understanding has been opened into a spiritual 
degree of light, so the will principle may now be opened 
into the celestial degree of love ; and the Lord descending 



296 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

through us from centres to circumferences, from primaries to 
ultimates, will govern and direct our individual lives to the 
minutest circumstances, and will finally be the all-in-all upon 
earth, as He is now the all-in-all in the heavens. 

There are now occurring in different centres, openings of 
the interior degrees of life ; and from those centres the spir- 
itual life presses powerfully downward to plant itself firmly in 
externals, and mold the external to its own laws and order. 
This is the new life of the New Church perfectly correspond- 
ing in ultimates to the life of the heavens. 

The Lord did not establish a church through Swedenborg. 
Our so-called New Church is nothing but a school of instruc- 
tion, very necessary, very useful, but still nothing but a 
school. But He sent his twelve disciples in 1770 to preach 
his new gospel throughout the spiritual world. The New 
Church was first established in the heavens, then in a new 
earth created in the world of spirits into which the hells can 
now be elevated ; and from these interior centres it is going 
to descend into the, hearts and minds of men, with infinite 
variety of manifestation according to the mental and moral 
states of the recipients. Those who are in the light of the 
opened Word, will be in the centre — the heart and lungs — 
the celestial within the spiritual, like a wheel within a wheel. 
From these the living New Church will evolve outward and 
downward to all spheres, through all degrees, the Lord alone 
controlling and directing, gradually knocking away all exist- 
ing institutions from under our feet, and creating from within 
and by processes still to be unfolded, a new church, a new 
state, a new social life, with the conjugial love as its central 
fountain — all constituting a genuine and orderly basis for a 
heavenly life. 



THE NEW MOVEMENT. 297 

These stupendous events, of which these new unfoldings 
are only among the feeble and faint beginnings or early mani- 
festations, imply the presence of the Lord in ultimates in a 
manner never before realized among men. He created a 
divine-natural and even a sensuo-corporeal sphere for Him- 
self during his sojourn in the flesh, in which He manifested 
Himself to his disciples after his resurrection. But they 
could not enter into it, and He could not flow into them 
from that sphere, at that era of the world's history. There- 
fore He vanished from their sight, or passed into heavenly 
states of which they were organically incapable. He is now 
opening the interior degrees of the natural plane of the hu- 
man mind, for the influx into it of his own divine-natural and 
even sensuo-corporeal sphere. He is coming to abide with 
us, to subdue all evil, to cure all diseases, to manifest his 
power "over all flesh/ ' to reconstruct our perverted human- 
ity, and even to change the forms and forces of nature into 
perfect harmony with the divine will. This will be Zion — 
his celestial kingdom, which He will establish in the natural 
degree upon this earth, because He is the Alpha and Omega ; 
and the people of this world correspond to the ultimate prin- 
ciples of the body of the Divine Man. 

The tremendous consequences which are destined to flow 
from this genuine personal entrance of the Divine-natural 
Humanity with its heavenly sphere (for it flows through the 
heavens to earth) into the race, will not be due in any sense 
to the evolution of the scientific or rational man, or to the 
preaching and extension of the New- Church faith ; although 
all these will go on just as usual. It will be the work of the 
Lord alone ; for the angels in their co-operation, work in the 
Lord and He in them. It will be nothing like spirit-control. 



298 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

On the contrary it will dissipate all those perverted, illusive, 
and disorderly spheres generated by the old proprium, and 
cast them out forever. It will deliver man from the infes- 
tations of all spirits, and endow him with the perfect free- 
agency, peace, and love of heaven. 

The preparations for the New Church began on the open- 
ing of the celestial degree years before the Last Judgment, in 
direct revelation of the doctrine of life to certain Africans ; 
in the spiritual experiences of the Quietists, the Quakers, the 
Moravians, the Methodists, etc., etc. ; and in a general awa- 
kening of the emotional side of the religious nature, not due 
to the promulgation of religious truth, and more or less dis- 
orderly, illusory, and inefficient for want of the sound doc- 
trines of spiritual truth. 

The new awakening now occurring in the bosom of the 
New Church, is made upon the orderly basis of sound doc- 
trine. It cannot fail, it cannot miscarry, for the Lord in his 
Divine-natural Humanity is with it and in it, and the supreme 
cause and motor power of it all. 

Nothing can prevent or retard this downward movement 
from the heavens, except the impatient desire of the human 
proprium to direct or interfere with it for its own purposes. 
We are commanded to do nothing at present — but to abstain 
from evils as sins against God, and to ' ' stand still, and see 
the salvation of the Lord." 

Your other question is about the skeleton in the closet of 
the New-Church ecclesiasticism. Swedenborg, in Conjugial 
Love, n. 252-3, gives certain vitiated states of mind and 
body as "legitimate causes" why a Christian man may put 
his wife away from his bed and his house without obtaining 
divorce. And he also states, when treating of the unregen- 



THE NEW MOVEMENT 2QQ 

erate or carnal marriage, that the same vitiated states of mind 
and body (C. L. 470) are legitimate causes why a natural or 
unchristian man should be permitted to put his wife away 
and keep a concubine. 

This is the skeleton in the New-Church closet, which all 
of us are afraid or ashamed of, and which all of us wish had 
never been created. The Old-Church people and other peo- 
ple have found it out, and parade it against the general truth 
and purity of Swedenborg's teachings. The objections are 
really infinitesimal; for how can a few questionable para- 
graphs outweigh the spiritual wisdom of twenty octavo vol- 
umes? I have a scientific friend of great intelligence, who 
says that he could never permit such an indecent and obscene 
book as the Bible to come into his family, so long as he had 
young children to be contaminated by it. The stories of Ju- 
dah and Tamar, and of Ammon and his sister, shut his eyes 
and his heart against the Psalms, and the Prophets, and the 
Evangelists, and the Revelation. So it is with those who 
fasten upon Swedenborg's humiliating concession to the spirit 
of his age (for it is nothing else), as a general argument against 
all he has written. 

Independent thinkers who take the good and throw the bad 
away, in Swedenborg and everywhere else, have no special 
difficulty about this matter. This man, they say, is here false 
to himself and to the supernal loveliness of his teachings 
everywhere else. Explain away as you please, there is a re- 
siduum of wrong in these "legitimate causes of separation 
from the wife." They are spots on the sun, indeed ; but they 
are spots. Eliminate them and leave the sun to shine spot- 
less. Swedenborg was clearly not infallible, not perfect, not 
entirely above or beyond his own social surroundings, or the 



300 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

customs and conventionalities of his age. This view settles 
the matter with many, myself included. The ecclesiastical 
special pleaders who take E. S. as "infallible authority," or 
his writings as "divine works," must go on trying to put spir- 
itual garments on that skeleton ; and they will probably strain 
at gnats and swallow camels for a long time. 

Although I repudiate the paragraphs referred to in this de- 
cided manner, do not suppose that I undervalue Swedenborg's 
Conjugial Love. It is the most wonderful, beautiful, and 
interior of all his works, except, of course, those which un- 
fold the spiritual sense of the Word of God. It teaches to 
those who comprehend, a morality and chastity hitherto un- 
known to the world. A distinguished gentleman, desirous 
of examining Swedenborg's claims, asked his minister to loan 
him one of Swedenborg's works. The clergyman gave him 
the Conjugial Love, as the hardest and the most puzzling. 
The gentleman returned it in a week and asked for more. 
"More?" said the minister; "what do you think of that 
book?" "That the writer got his information direct from 
the heavens," was the reply. And I concur with his opinion. 

I have sometimes thought that these things, and some other 
mistakes and inconsistencies which may be picked out here 
and there in Swedenborg's voluminous writings, were permit- 
ted by Divine Providence, to preserve the future church from 
that insane hero-worship and idolatry of the man, which has 
already begun, and which tends to abolish all free thought 
and rationality in those who entertain the absurd idea that 
he was infallible and his writings divine. We may be sure 
that in this and all other matters the Lord will take care of 
the things of his church, and bring light out of darkness and 
good out of evil. Yours truly, W. H. H. 



LETTER XXXVIII. 

SHALL WE JOIN AN EXTERNAL NEW CHURCH? 

MY DEAR MADAM : — I have answered at considerable 
length the question of an isolated New-Church woman, 
who found no spiritual strength or comfort in the Epis- 
copal Church to which she belonged, and who desired to know 
whether attendance upon its services was obligatory or ad- 
visable. You ask me a different question. You are a New- 
Church woman, and one, permit me to say, of very great 
spiritual insight as well as remarkable religious experiences. 
You have always been isolated, or very nearly alone, and now 
for the first time you are going into a great city, where there 
is a large, highly respectable New-Church society, and a very 
excellent and talented minister \ and you ask me whether it is 
your religious duty, for your own sake and the sake of your 
children, to join the church and participate earnestly and 
cordially in its exercises. 

" What a strange question ! H the external man says, "as if 
it was not the plain duty of every Christian man and woman 
to attend the church and labor for the church in every possible 
way." But you have entirely outgrown that whole sphere of 
thought and argument, and it has no vital hold upon your 
faith or your life. You see around you vast bodies of professed 
Christians, whose churches are saturated with false doctrines, 
false motives, false principles, so that you believe with Sweden- 
borg, that as ecclesiastical institutions they are spiritually dead, 

and have henceforth no organic connection with the heavens 
26 301 



302 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

or authoritative relation to men. You have not the least sense 
of impropriety in neglecting their ministrations. 

But you search in vain for the New Church — the New Je- 
rusalem — the promised organization which is to supersede the 
effete institution established by the x\postles. The Lord intro- 
mited Swedenborg into the spiritual world, revealed to him 
the spiritual sense of the Divine Word; and Swedenborg 
announces the coming of a New Church from heaven, and 
publishes the heavenly doctrines which are to constitute the 
faith of this Church. But the Church itself does not come ! 
The Lord prepares the man for his work, and sends us the 
doctrines ; but He calls no apostles, commissions no preachers, 
organizes no Church. He simply says : Commit these things 
to the press, and give them to mankind — and no more. 

The early receivers of the doctrines of the New Church, 
dissatisfied with their old associations and drawn together by 
affinities of faith, very naturally organized themselves into 
societies, which have multiplied and assumed the name of the 
Church of the New Jerusalem. These societies have no divine 
authority for their movements, and have probably no more 
organic connection with the heavens than the Baptists or the 
Presbyterians. They justify themselves on the apparently 
rational ground, that church organization is a necessity of the 
religious life, and that Swedenborg speaks of governments and 
churches as being equally necessary on earth and in heaven. 
Churches being requisite, why should we wait for any special 
Pentecost to indue us with power from heaven to initiate a 
new era? And so they went to work with the forms and 
spirit of the old Dispensation. The result, with such bound- 
less wealth of spiritual truth in their hands, has not been 
hitherto satisfactory. The ecclesiastical proprium manifests 



SHALL WE JOIN AN EXTERNAL NEW CHURCH? 303 

the same old character, and the people as a body of Christians, 
seem to have risen but little if any above the amiable respecta- 
bilities and moralities of the older churches. 

All this you know very well ; and you will not suffer the 
bitter disappointment of many an isolated receiver who goes 
where he can enjoy the inestimable privileges of church asso- 
ciation. How often have I heard the isolated receiver, par- 
ticularly if he was a new convert, exclaim, "O that I could 
enjoy the benefit and blessing of fellowship with the people who 
believe these heavenly doctrines ! They surely must lead angelic 
lives, and a whole society of them must make a little heaven.' ' 
Well, he joins the church, and is politely and kindly received ; 
and there it ends. He finds the supposed church to be a 
heterogeneous association of people, who are in entirely closed 
conditions, and who judge of him and treat him exactly as 
the outside world does, according to his family connections, 
his wealth, class, education, and manners. There are few heart- 
associations among them, and spiritual affinities go for little. 

The organization is built upon external and natural prin- 
ciples, and the fruit of it is an external and natural people. 
They will converse freely about the truths of the church, and 
enthusiastically about their immense superiority over every- 
thing hitherto presented to the human mind. But if you 
open your hungry heart to them, and talk about the new and 
perfect life which must follow the new light, about the death of 
the old proprium, the blessings of prayer, the coming of the 
Lord into the individual soul, the development of the church 
within, the entire redemption of body and soul from the power 
of sin, etc., the most of them will turn you a deaf ear, and finally 
vote you a bore, or a crank, or a victim of enthusiastic spirits. 

And yet not all ; for by quiet waiting and careful observa- 



304 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

tion, you will discover a few souls in sympathy with yourself, 
souls that are hungering and thirsting, not only after truth 
but after righteousness, and who are watching and praying for 
the kingdom of God. There are even now Simeons, "devout 
and just, waiting for the consolation of Israel ;" and Annas 
who depart not from the temple, but serve God with fastings 
and prayers night and day. These people are not satisfied 
with ecclesiastical religion, nor with its most admired and 
beautiful products. They know there is a better, a truer and 
more vital kind ; and they desire to walk with the Lord Jesus, 
"even as He walked." 

There is a "remnant" of this kind in every church, and 
probably among the people of every religion in the world. 
It is the new seed for the new era — the leaven which will 
spread and leaven the whole. It seems to me that the Lord 
will revolutionize every church from its own centres : that is, 
by influx from within, and infinite accommodations to the 
states of all. Those who are most contrite and humble and 
therefore most open, will receive Him in the celestial degree. 
Those who are sincere lovers and seekers of truth, and in- 
tensely loyal to its behests, will find Him in the glorious light 
of the spiritual degree. And those who are religious from 
natural and mixed motives, and who esteem external things 
above their real value, will remain in the natural degree, but 
be brought more and more into an orderly life of use and 
obedience. 

Thus the churches will come into the new life by interior 
processes, readjustments of creed, vivification of "remains" 
called revivals, disintegrations, and reconstructions. Un- 
worthy elements will recede and withdraw under many pre- 
tences, but really because they will be repelled by the sphere 



SHALL WE JOIN AN EXTERNAL NEW CHURCH? 305 

of the Divine Love. Those who remain will draw others to 
them by the force of spiritual attraction ; until after a while,- 
however the churches may differ in opinion, they will be one 
in the heavenly spirit of brotherhood and charity. 

Now, my dear madam, you and I and every one of us 
must play our part in the disintegrations and reconstructions 
which the new era necessitates. Dissociated from old things, 
we must become consociated with the new. Our life is 
bound up in the bundle of all other lives, and the religious 
life of the whole is the consociated religious life of the units. 
Asia and Africa can never be christianized, until the Asia and 
Africa in our own souls are reformed and sanctified. We 
must regard it as our most practical duty to unite with our 
fellows in every good work. And as men who think alike as 
to doctrine are most likely to harmonize as to conduct, a 
Newchurchman can surely find his best field of usefulness 
among Newchurchmen. 

But, in strongly advising you, as I do, to join the church, 
to fulfill all the duties and obligations thereby imposed upon 
you, and to train your children under its influences, I beg 
you to keep your mind clear of Old- Church conceptions of 
the subject. Do not join the church because it is an institu- 
tion authoritatively organized by the apostles, for that has 
expired \ but because it is your spontaneous desire to unite 
with the neighbor in forms of spiritual use. It is a field of 
great uses, many even yet undeveloped ; and you will find 
much spiritual benefit, not from anything the church gives 
you, but from the outflowing and outworking of the Lord's 
life through yourself for the promotion of a general good. 
He who gives most receives most, for influx and efflux are 
equal. Never be satisfied with the existing order of things 
26* U 



306 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

either in yourself or others, but always reach out for some- 
thing higher and better. 

In order to look at the church from this interior stand- 
point, it would be well for you to keep in mind Swedenborg's 
distinction between a congregation and a church. He says : 
"A congregation in general is what is commonly called a 
church ; but to constitute it a church, it is necessary that 
every individual in the congregation should be a church ; for 
every general [thing or principle] implies parts similar to it- 
self."— A. C. 4292. 

Judged by this high standard (and it is the heavenly stand- 
ard), we have no churches upon earth at present, but only 
congregations and societies. Our congregations have no 
more divine authority or essential relationship to the Divine, 
than any political or social organization. They are schools 
for spiritual instruction, and means for the cultivation of the 
spirit of brotherhood and fellowship. 

" That which makes heaven with man, also makes the 
church/ ' says Swedenborg. So that the true way to build up 
a church, is to plant the kingdom of heaven in the souls of its 
members. The true way for every man to keep the church in 
his neighbor, is to build it in himself. The old churches of 
the apostolic dispensation were constructed from without, by 
authority. The New Church, co-extensive with the human 
race, descends from within. It is the marriage between good- 
ness and truth, the marriage between faith in the understand- 
ing and charity in the will. Its supreme centre is in the con- 
jugial love and the love of children. From these it flows 
outward and becomes the love of the neighbor and of all 
imaginable uses to the neighbor. Such is the life of heaven, 
and such will be the life of the New Church which is the 



SHALL WE JOIN AN EXTERNAL NEW CHURCH? 307 

Lord's heaven upon earth. This heaven upon earth is, how- 
ever, only possible in proportion as " the former heaven and 
the former earth " pass away from our own organic being. 

Bring, my dear madam, the whole strength of your affec- 
tions into the service of the society. Study and disseminate 
the doctrines, visit the sick, train the children, assist the 
poor, cultivate friendships, lift high your ideal standard of 
charity and self-consecration, preach and practice the new 
and perfect life of peace and love : and if, on account of your 
advanced and liberal ideas, you are misconstrued and re- 
buffed and neglected, forgive the mistaken ones and labor for 
them with renewed zeal. 

Yours truly, 

W. H. H. 



LETTER XXXIX. 

THE DESCENT OF THE CELESTIAL THROUGH THE 
SPIRITUAL INTO THE NATURAL. 



M 



"Y DEAR FRIEND:— You ask me two questions, the 
answers to which involve some exceedingly interesting 
considerations. First, you wish to know why I call 
the New Church a celestial church, when we have nothing of 
it yet but a revelation of spiritual truth. And secondly, you 
ask, if the influx of the celestial into the natural without a 
suitable intermediate plane of spiritual thought is so danger- 
ous, how was it with those Africans to whom Swedenborg says 
a revelation of the celestial life and doctrine had been made 
in his own time. 

Let us revert to the fundamental truth, that the influx of life 
from the Lord is always from the celestial into the spiritual 
and thence into the natural. The results or phenomena pro- 
duced, depend upon the organic states of the natural and the 
spiritual degrees into which the celestial flows. If these lower 
degrees are obstructed by evils and falsities, the influent life 
is perverted and corrupted. The inner or higher life cannot 
descend, until the external life and all its forms are reduced 
to correspondent order and obedience. Nor can it mold the 
external life into forms truly correspondent with itself, except 
through the associated and corresponding spiritual truths of 
the middle degree. 

Every reader of Swedenborg knows that the organic func- 
tion of John the Baptist was to prepare the way of the Lord, 

308 



THE DESCENT OF THE CELESTIAL. 309 

by preaching a renunciation of the life of the old Adam, and 
the entrance into a spiritual state which could be receptive of 
the divine celestial life, " the Lamb of God " then imminent 
in the world. In precisely the same way the vast system of 
spiritual truth revealed through Swedenborg, is an organic 
intermediate for the descent of the celestial life through its 
corresponding forms into the ultimates of the natural degree. 
The opening of the divine wisdom of the Word, must of 
necessity be followed by the evolution of the celestial life, 
which means the Lord's vital presence in the soul. 

The Church began in the celestial centres. In the course 
of time, it fell into a lower degree and became a spiritual 
church. By further declension it became natural, and finally 
external and literal. The Lord was then made incarnate, re- 
opened the closed degrees of life,- and inaugurated the ascend- 
ing movement from circumferences back again to centres. 
The church which his disciples instituted was a spiritual church, 
corresponding, as Swedenborg says, to the ancient or spiritual 
church after the flood. The last and final church, the New 
Jerusalem, which follows the opening of the Word, is not a 
spiritual church on the same plane with the first Christian or 
Apostolic church, but a celestial church with a discretely 
different life. To suppose otherwise, is to violate the funda- 
mental order and logic of the New- Church philosophy. 

Swedenborg, moreover, declares that the marriage of good 
and truth which is regeneration, does not take place between 
goods and truths of the same degree, but between the goods 
of a lower and the truths of a higher degree. And the same 
relation must hold between the truths of the lower and the. 
goods of the higher degree. No possible union of natural 
good and truth in the natural man, can make him a spiritual 



3IO LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

man ; and no possible union of spiritual good and truth in 
the spiritual man, can elevate him to the celestial degree. 
The impregnation comes always from above. The spiritual 
truths revealed for the New Church are to be conjoined with 
celestial goods, and the resulting life will not be the spiritual 
states of the Apostolic church, but a discretely higher and 
diviner life brought down into ultimates. The Church is 
determined, not by doctrines but by the life of the doctrine. 
Swedenborg gave no hint for the institution of a Church, be- 
cause he knew that his mission was only to promulgate the 
doctrines from the Word, which would be for the use of a 
Church to come, which the Lord would establish in his own 
time and in his own way. 

The crowning reason why the New Church should be called 
a celestial church, is drawn from the Word itself and from 
Swedenborg' s interpretation of it. When John "saw the 
holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of 
heaven' ' (Rev. xxi. 2), he also "heard a great voice out of 
heaven, saying, ' Behold the tabernacle of God is with 
men.' " The holy city with its temple corresponds to the 
Lord as the divine truth in the spiritual degree : the taberna- 
cle in the inmost of the temple, corresponds to the Lord as 
the divine love in the celestial degree. Swedenborg, there- 
fore, says : 

" A great voice out of heaven, saying, ( Behold the taber- 
nacle of God is with men/ signifies the Lord from love 
speaking and declaring the glad tidings, that He himself will 
now be present among men in his Divine Humanity. ... By 
the tabernacle of God is meant the celestial church, and in a 
universal sense the Lord's celestial kingdom, and in a su- 
preme sense his Divine Humanity." — A. R. 882. 



THE DESCENT OF THE CELESTIAL. 311 

Do you not now see, my dear friend, that the New Jerusa- 
lem is a celestial church or life, based upon spiritual truth, — 
"a woman clothed with the sun, and with the moon under 
her feet " ? And if you will ask yourself the question, How 
is the Lord to be now present among men in his Divine Hu- 
manity differently from the manner in which He has been 
present heretofore in the Apostolic church, you will begin to 
see the privileges and tremendous responsibilities of those 
whose acceptance of spiritual truth obligates them to lead a 
celestial life. 

Now for your second question : How was the celestial life 
unfolded in the Africans — which Swedenborg calls "the com- 
ing of the Lord " and " the initiament of the New Church " 
— without the intermediation of spiritual truth. It is a 
mistake to suppose that there was no such intermediation. 
Remember that this spiritual opening among the Africans 
was superintended by good spirits and angels, who no doubt 
taught their almost infantile minds the little modicum of spir- 
itual truth which exactly corresponded to the awakening of 
their celestial affections. It was a matter of dictation, Swe- 
denborg says ; and of course we may infer that the neces- 
sary spiritual truths were supplied in the most appropriate 
manner. 

That singular relation was for a special purpose, the open- 
ing of an avenue of influx from the heavens into the rational 
faculty of the human race. (T. C. R. 840.) It was of very 
limited extent, as the Jewish economy was, which, neverthe- 
less, for many centuries connected the heavens and the earth 
together by correspondences. It was probably of short dura- 
tion. The opening of the celestial degree in the most simple 
and childlike people, unperverted by falsified doctrines, was 



312 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS, 

the gateway through which the Divine life passed into the 
spiritual degree of our life ; but after the promulgation of a 
vast system of spiritual truth — the great medium between the 
celestial and the natural having been established — the ne- 
cessity for direct dictation ceased. I suspect, therefore, that 
future discoveries in Africa, from which some Newchurchmen 
hope so much, will reveal nothing but some tribes or nations 
in good natural states, holding traditions of wonderful com- 
munications from angels and spirits to their not very remote 
ancestors. 

Yes, my dear friend, the celestial influx must pass through 
the spiritual on its way to the natural degree, and its mani- 
festation will be determined by the forms and molds of thought 
which it finds in the spiritual degree through which it passes. 
This is the reason why the celestial life which was evidently 
awakened in the Quietists, the Quakers, the Moravians, the 
early Methodists, and others, finding no prepared basis of 
spiritual truth, was choked, perverted, and almost perished 
in the chaos of false ideas which those people derived from 
the nearly consummated church in which they were born. 

That the true celestial life was struggling for utterance in 
these enthusiasts, is an unquestionable fact. Passages selected 
from Guyon, George Fox, Wesley, Law, and others, and 
compared with passages from Swedenborg, would show clearly 
that "the annihilated soul" of the Quietist, "the inner 
light " of the Quaker, and the "witnessing spirit " of the 
Methodist, belong really to the sphere of celestial percep- 
tions, and find their explanation nowhere but in the philoso- 
phy of the New Church. The same philosophy explains also 
the causes of their delusions, fantasies, and failures, and 
points us with unerring certainty to a witnessing spirit which 



THE DESCENT OF THE CELESTIAL. 3I3 

never deceives, to an inner light which cannot mislead, and 
to a state of annihilation which is a resurrection into eternal 
life. 

Finally, my dear friend, rest assured that if we prepare the 
way of the Lord in our own souls according to the eternal 
principles of truth ; if in the natural degree we order our ex- 
ternal lives strictly according to his commandments; if in 
the spiritual degree we illumine our understandings with the 
heavenly light of his revealed wisdom ; if in the celestial de- 
gree we surrender our hearts and souls absolutely to the power 
of his love, He will manifest the presence of his Divine Hu- 
manity in us and through us, in a manner never before possi- 
ble in the world. For such a universal coming of the Lord, 
let us all pray. 

Yours truly, 

W. H. H. 
27 



LETTER XL. 

RESTATEMENT OF FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES. 

EDITORS NEW-CHURCH INDEPENDENT :— I have 
now been holding for three years, under Divine Provi- 
dence, a series of epistolary communications with your 
readers. Those who have been immersed in the cares of busi- 
ness and the anxieties of the natural life, have probably paid 
them little attention. On some they have made favorable im- 
pressions, and these have thanked me for showing them that 
Swedenborg was deeper and broader than they knew. Others 
have expressed the profoundest gratitude for unfolding to them 
the true nature of the proprium, and giving a new awakening 
and a new impulse to their affections and thoughts. Many 
have been secretly troubled in soul at what seemed to them 
new doctrines and new explanations of doctrine, and have 
employed the conspiracy of silence to prevent the spread of 
what they considered revolutionary ideas. Many liberal Chris- 
tians in other organizations, have discovered from these let- 
ters with delight and surprise, that Swedenborg teaches a more 
beautiful, practical, and absolute life of holiness, than has ever 
been inculcated by the highest evangelical authorities. 

It will be well, before commencing a new series of Letters, 
to give a brief resume or restatement of some fundamental 
principles which have been accepted with delight in some 
quarters, and received with distrust in others. These inter- 
pretations of Swedenborg bring us more closely into spiritual 
rapport with the whole Christian world, and invite special at- 

3H 



RESTATEMENT OF FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES. 315 

tention to our heavenly doctrines. For our own people I have 
fortified every point by copious quotations from Swedenborg, 
and by logical reasoning from his premises. 

The coming of the Lord, or the Second Advent, is some- 
thing more than his coming into the clouds of heaven, which 
was only the infilling of the letter of the Word with the light 
of the spiritual sense revealed to Swedenborg. His coming 
involves of necessity the unfolding of a new life in the world, 
the building up of a new heaven and a new church in the indi- 
vidual soul; for says Swedenborg, " the new heaven and the 
new church constitute the coming of the Lord." — A. R. 151. 

This new life is a celestial life elevated a discrete degree 
above any religious life hitherto possible in the world except 
in its golden age. It is more than a life of obedience to di- 
vine authority. It is more than a life of intelligent coopera- 
tion with the movements of divine law. It is all these and 
more. It is a state of organic harmony with the Divine will, 
a life of love so thorough and positive, that the whole life of 
the man is the Divine will brought down into ultimates. It 
is the secret path by which the Lord, the heavens, the New 
Jerusalem, the life of the Word, are all about to descend upon 
the earth. 

This new celestial life has been struggling for expression 
and ultimation for about two hundred years. It can only 
find its genuine expression and ultimation in the heavenly 
marriage of its affections to the spiritual truths from the Word 
revealed by Swedenborg. All efforts at the perfect Christian 
life will be of necessity incomplete and abortive, until spirit- 
ual truth is implanted in the understanding as the vessel re- 
cipient of celestial good. The vital elements of the Christian 
world are groping blindly after the very things they would 



3l6 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

find in Swedenborg whom they reject, truly not knowing what 
they do. 

This new and heavenly life is striving to develop in the 
world without the apparent aid of the new doctrines or the 
New Church, although in a deep-rooted, hidden harmony 
with them. Before and coincidently with Swedenborg, but 
independently of him, there was a new influx of the divine 
love into the hearts of men, which has gone on increasing 
unto the present day. Guyon, Fenelon, John and Charles 
Wesley, Fletcher, William Law, Wilberforce, Edward Irving, 
and a thousand others, were th? fruits of this divine seed 
planted we know not how. What is the meaning of these 
things ? They are not the results of Swedenborg' s teachings, 
nor of any direct knowledge of the spiritual sense of the Word 
of God. Nor does this great revival of the religious life, out- 
side of Swedenborg and the external New Church, belong to 
the sunset of the Old Dispensation, but to the golden dawn 
of the New Era. These movements are bound up with our 
own in the bundle of the life of the New Jerusalem. 

There are two baptisms ; one of water, which means initia- 
tion into the visible Christian church, or an acknowledgment 
of the Christian religion and its Founder, accompanied by 
the desire and purpose to obey their teachings ; the other of 
fire, which means the kindling of the divine love in the soul. 
Both are necessary to the perfect church. The one great 
need of the religious life of the age, is a knowledge of the 
spiritual truths to be found only in the writings of Sweden- 
borg. The one great need of the conservators of these truths 
revealed from heaven, is the baptism of fire. These spiritual 
factors have for each other the deepest organic attraction. 
When they meet and unite, the angelic life can be truly un- 



RESTATEMENT OF FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES. 3I7 

folded among men. This will be the apostle's " manifesta- 
tion of the sons of God," and we shall experience the new 
Pentecost. 

Love is the central and supreme element in the Christian 
life. Truth, notwithstanding its great offices, is secondary 
and subordinate. All the truths of heaven in the memory of 
a man, could not of themselves advance him a step in the 
religious life. They are merely dead material until vivified 
into living forms by the awakening of affection, emotion, and 
sentiment. Our people generally are living in the mere ap- 
pearances of truth, in the mere semblances of the Christian 
religion, in a mere routine of respectable moralism, and can 
scarcely be aroused to believe that there is a better way. It 
is because we have preached truth and doctrine too much, 
and the love or doing of truth and the life of doctrine too 
little. Let me fortify this view of the central and supreme 
place of good or love, by a single quotation from Swedenborg. 

"That some idea may be had of the appearances of truth, 
and what they are, let the following cases serve for illustra- 
tion : 1 . Man believes that he is reformed and regenerated 
by the truth of faith, but this is an appearance ; he is reformed 
and regenerated by the good of faith, that is, by charity to- 
wards his neighbor and by love to the Lord. 2. Man be- 
lieves that truth enables him to perceive what good is, because 
it teaches, but this is an appearance ; it is good which enables 
truth to- perceive, for good is the soul or the life of truth. 3. 
Man believes that truth introduces to good, when he lives 
according to the truths he has learned ; but it is good which 
flows into truth, and introduces it to itself. 4. It appears to 
man that truth brings good to perfection ; whereas it is good 
which brings truth to perfection. 5. Goods [that is, the 
good deeds of life] appear to man as the fruits of faith, but 
27 * 



3l8 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

they are the fruits of charity. From these few cases, it may 
in some measure be known, what the appearances of truth 
are; and such appearances are innumerable. ' ' — A. C. 3207. 

Another fundamental truth repeatedly insisted on and 
never to be forgotten, is this : that there can be no coming 
or descent of the Lord into the natural proprium of man. 
He cannot even enter into the proprium of the angels. He 
can only enter into and abide with what is his own. It was 
for this reason He gave us his blood to drink and his flesh 
to eat. The new proprium thence derived, is not the old 
proprium regenerated, but it is the Lord's life discreted from 
his Divine Humanity, and given to us to feel and enjoy as if 
it were our own, as the angels do. Just so far as we are in 
the new proprium, we are in the Lord and in heaven or in 
angelic states ; and we are in the new proprium only so far as 
we are out of ourselves — out of our old, selfish, and natural 
external life. 

These ideas constitute the Key to a true knowledge of the 
coming of the Lord, and of the new heaven, the new earth, 
and the new life He will bring with Him. He comes with 
the holy angels when He can enter into our lives as He en- 
ters into the lives of the angels. This can be done only by 
our subduing and putting away the old proprium entirely. 
We can never do this until we know what the proprium is, 
until we sound " the depths of Satan" in our souls. Self- 
knowledge, the most difficult and painful of all knowledge, is 
acquired only by the constant, thorough, and unflinching ex- 
ploration of our motives, purposes, dispositions, and conduct 
by the light of revealed truth. We will find self, in some 
form or other, stamped upon every iota of our social, civil, 
and religious life. Could we realize the hideous, sensual, 



RESTATEMENT OF FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES. 3I9 

selfish, and devilish nature of the proprium, we would sink 
into utter humiliation and despair if not sustained by the 
Divine Humanity or the truths of the Divine Word. 

The whole modern theory of deliverance from evil, eleva- 
tion of character and purification of life, by education and 
culture, is radically false. It can produce nothing but a sup- 
pressed proprium, refined, beautiful, charming in exteriors, 
but containing the unfathomable hell of self-righteousness 
underneath, and doomed with its correspondent civilization 
to radical destruction. Even Newchurchmen, deviating from 
the teaching of Swedenborg, have contributed to this delu- 
sion, and suffer from its evil influences — believing and teach- 
ing that the Lord gives us a new proprium to have and hold 
as absolutely our own, thus making one man really and or- 
ganically better or worse than another ; whereas all men and 
all angels are equally evil and false, and the Lord alone is 
good and true. No man or angel ever experiences a genu- 
inely good affection, or speaks the real truth, when he feels 
or speaks from the proprium or selfhood, however modified 
this selfhood may have been by educational or religious in- 
fluences. 

This point ought to be definitely settled — for those, at 
least, who attach supreme authority to the writings of Swe- 
denborg — by the following paragraph from D. P. 316 : 

" Self-derived prudence persuades man and confirms him in 
the belief that everything good and true is from himself and 
in himself; because self-derived prudence is man's intellect- 
ual selfhood, influent from self-love which is his voluntary 
selfhood : and the selfhood cannot do otherwise than make 
all things its own, for the man so infatuated cannot be eleva- 
ted above it. All who are led by the Lord's divine provi- 



320 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

dence are elevated above the selfhood, and then they see that 
everything good and true is from the Lord : nay, more, they 
see that what is in man from the Lord is always the Lord's, 
and never man's. He who believes otherwise, is like a man 
who has his master's goods under his care, and lays claim to 
them or appropriates them as his own : he is not a steward 
but a thief." 

Yes: the apostle was clearly right when he said: — "The 
carnal mind is enmity against God : for it is not subject to the 
law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in 
the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but 
in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you." 

From the stand-point of these truths, the Second Advent 
may be comprehended as a descent of the Lord into the lives 
and business of men ; and its final effect, through innumerable 
intermediate causes, will be to reconstitute the church, to re- 
organize the state, and to reconstruct the elements of nature 
in perfect harmony with the influent forms and order of the 
heavenly world. These things can only be understood as 
they are unfolded ; and however sublime and beautiful the sub- 
jects, it is useless to speculate about them outside of general 
principles. The great obstructionists to the descent of the 
Lord into the Body of Humanity, will be of two classes : those 
who scorn and reject Him altogether, and those who think 
they receive Him most ardently and intelligently, but who 
appropriate his goodness and truth to themselves, and thereby 
become wise in their own eyes and good in their own conceit. 
Overcoming all these obstacles, however, our Lord will de- 
scend into ultimates by organic processes, through the heart 
and mind of the church, through the conjugial love, the love 
of children, the love of the neighbor, and the love of uses ; 



RESTATEMENT OF FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES. 321 

and will take upon Himself the government of the world, more 
perfectly, universally, and efficiently, than if He had descend- 
ed as the literalists expect, into the clouds of heaven with 
millions of angels, and instituted by external means an eter- 
nal kingdom upon earth. * 

A powerful mesmerist once had upon the stage a number 
of individuals who were brought fully under his influence. 
He stood in the midst of them and said in his positive man- 
ner : u Iam now going away from you, and you will not see 
me. In a few moments I will come again, and then you will 
see me." He did not move from the spot. Several per- 
sons then asked the mesmerized subjects, " Where is the Pro- 
fessor ?" They all answered, "We do not know; he has 
gone away." " Do you not see the Professor right before 
your eyes?" " No : he is not here." The Professor ex- 
claimed, " I have come back. Do you not see me?" " Cer- 
tainly," they all answered, " we see you now because you have 
come back." It is thus that the power of the selfhood and 
the evil world mesmerize us with blindness, deafness, and 
deadness as to the presence of the Lord who stands always 
in our midst. 

We cannot now know, see, and feel the Lord on account 
of spiritual and natural obstacles and obstructions in -the 
lower and lowest degrees of life. Vast processes for their re- 
moval are accordingly going on in every direction. It will 
be apparently true that all these things, the revolutions of 
social and religious opinion, the disintegrations and recon- 
structions in church and state, etc., are produced by natural 
causes and the spontaneous evolution of the race. The gen- 
uine truth will be, that in proportion as vessels are prepared 
for his descent into ultimates, the Lord will make his presence 



322 LETTERS ON SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 

and his power felt in the human spirit, with infinite accom- 
modations to individual states, and bring about a continuous 
re-adjustment between internal and external relations, until 
the New Jerusalem " comes down from God out of heaven, 
prepared as a bride adorned for her husband/ ' 

Looking and praying for this coming from within, and the 
re-adjustment of all environments by interior forces in per- 
fect harmony for the consummation of the Divine will, I re- 
main, 

Yours truly, 

W. H. H. 



APPENDIX 



The Lord's Descent 

INTO 

Ultimates. 

323 



The Lord's Descent 



INTO 



U 



LTIMATES. 



ESSAY I. 

OPENING OF THE INTERIORS. 

I PRAYED earnestly to the Lord to illumine my mind in 
relation to the method of his Second Coming and the 
inauguration of a new life in the world. That night I 
dreamed much about those subjects. Rousing once out of 
my sleep, I thought to myself how clear everything would be, 
if I could remember the glorious train of thought which had 
been presented to me in my dreams ; but in the morning all 
had escaped me except a few ideas and some fragments of 
ideas, and a clear perception of the fact, that the solution 
and secret of the whole matter lay in the Opening of the 
Interiors. 

How could it be otherwise ? — when the whole story of the 
fall of man, from the heights of celestial perception down to 
the sensuo-corporeal depths of barbarism, is a story of the 
successive closure of the degrees of life : and the whole story 
of his redemption and restoration is a story of the successive 
re-openings of the natural, rational, spiritual, and celestial 
planes of thought and affection. For a knowledge of these 
degrees of life we are entirely indebted to Emanuel Svveden- 
borg. 

28 325 



3^6 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

There is no opening of the sensuo-corporeal degree of life, 
and none can be made in it, for it is the bottom floor and 
there is nothing below it. It is the plane of animal life, with 
the instincts, ideas, and appetites associated with the senses. 
All the others rest upon it like a house upon its foundation. 
Above it rise the organic compartments of the human spirit — 
the natural, rational, spiritual, and celestial — like the succes- 
sive stories of a house. Each has its floors, planes, or termina- 
tions which separate it from the other compartments. The 
discrete degrees of life are held together as one by influx and 
correspondence — influx of the one Divine life passing from 
degree to degree, producing corresponding forms of affection 
and thought at each successive descent. 

If there were no intervening floorings or terminations the 
influx would flow from top to bottom without any ultimation 
until it reached the latter. Life as it flows from the Divine 
Proceeding of the Lord, is the celestial life. Therefore the 
first created men of the world were celestial men, with a sen- 
suo-corporeal basis. As they passed from the earthly to the 
spiritual life, they formed the celestial heavens. There was 
then no spiritual heaven in existence. The Lord governed 
by influx through the celestial heaven. The good men after 
the flood were of the celestial-spiritual type, and were saved 
by the incarnation of Jehovah, and raised into a spiritual 
heaven. When men ceased to be spiritual, they sank to a 
lower degree or type, the natural. The interior men of this 
type, called by Swedenborg the rational man, passing upward 
formed the ultimate heaven. The influx of the Divine life 
passing now through the three heavens above us into the sensuo- 
corporeal basis, forms the natural man of our present world. 

Although men are all now born natural, with every superior 
degree closed in them, still they contain those degrees em- 
bodied in their structures, so that they may be successively 
opened from above, and from natural they may become ra- 



OPENING OF THE INTERIORS. Z 2 7 

tional, spiritual, and celestial. Between the hells and the 
three heavens there is»an impassable gulf; but the hells flow 
into and rest upon the natural plane of human life — the sen- 
suous and scientific sphere of affection and thought ; and man 
can only be delivered from them by the opening of the ra- 
tional, spiritual, and celestial degrees which bring him into 
communication with the heavens and the Lord. 

The order of influx is always from centre to circumference, 
from within outward, and from above downward, and never 
the contrary, however overwhelming the appearance and evi- 
dence that it is so. " It appears/ ' says Swedenborg, "as if 
sensation came from influx by the externals ; but it is the in- 
ternal which flows into the external, and the contrary is a 
fallacy. 7 ' Again, he declares that physical influx is against 
order and impossible ; for all influx is from the spiritual world 
into the natural, and not from the natural into the spiritual. 
Let us fix this fundamental axiom of the Swedenborgian phil- 
osophy firmly in the mind, for it will give us a glorious deliv- 
erance from the bondage of sensuous appearances. 

Another axiom of similar importance is this : " The order 
of all influx, thus of all existence from the Lord, is through 
the celestial state to the spiritual, and through the spiritual to 
the natural, thus according to successive order.' ' A man 
therefore in the course of his regeneration, does not first be- 
come rational and then spiritual and then celestial, as seems 
to be the case from appearances, according to which even 
Swedenborg himself appears sometimes to speak. He follows 
of necessity the order of creation and the laws of influx and 
correspondence. He seems, indeed, to be regenerated by 
truth which is acquired or taught from without ; but truth is 
entirely dead, until it is made alive or vivified from within 
by an affection for truth, or desire to know it and a will to 
obey it. The first step is always, therefore, an influx from 
the celestial degree into the affections of the natural degree. 



328 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

The celestial degree is first opened in him by the vivifica- 
tion of " remains, " and according to «the measure and char- 
acter of the opening, a new and corresponding spiritual life 
is created in his middle degree ; and the same influx passing 
into the rational and natural degree, produces there effects 
corresponding to the ends and causes which had been previ- 
ously operative in the interior degrees. This order seems to 
be reversed, because man himself is born and lives in a state 
of inverted order, and is overwhelmed by the sensuous appear- 
ance of a progress from without inward, and from natural to 
spiritual. (See A. C. 1495.) 

The degrees are not opened from below upward, but the re- 
verse. The natural cannot flow into the spiritual, nor the 
spiritual into the celestial. Man can become either celestial 
or spiritual or rational even whilst living in the natural form ; 
but it is because the three degrees of life which exist in suc- 
cessive order in the heavens, exist in simultaneous order in 
the man, who is builded after the image of the heavens and 
after the likeness of God. The celestial heavens flow into our 
inmost degree of life, the spiritual heavens into our middle 
degree of life, the ultimate heavens into our natural degree of 
life. The whole man is determined by what is in his celestial 
degree — for that is his life, his love, his affections, his motives, 
the sum total of the ends he has in view. This celestial re- 
produces itself in different but corresponding forms in the 
spiritual degree ; and these again reproduce themselves in still 
lower but corresponding forms in the natural degree ; and what 
we see in ultimates on the surface is not the beginning of things, 
as it appears, but the ending, the basis and containant of all 
prior, interior, and superior things in the universe. 

These great organic truths lead us to comprehend the pri- 
mary principles of a true psychology — that all things exist 
within us and not only outside of us as they seem to do ; that 
the three heavens are infinitesimally structured and mirrored 



OPENING OF THE INTERIORS. Z 2 9 

in each individual organism ; that we are microcosms of the 
macrocosm ; that matter is plastic to the operations of spirit 
as the body is to the operations of the soul ; that nature has 
no independent externeity or objectivity, but is an external 
picture, like an image in a mirror, representing to our sen- 
sational consciousness the wonders which are being from mo- 
ment to moment enacted within our own spirits in their celes- 
tial, spiritual, and natural spheres of being. 

The above statement must be slightly qualified; for the 
metaphor of the picture, or the image in a mirror, does not 
convey the exact truth to the mind. Nature has no mdependent 
externeity in relation to the spiritual world, but it has an ex- 
terneity genuine and solid, which it is difficult for us to be- 
lieve is so entirely dependent for its existence upon a con- 
tinuous influx from the spiritual world. It is not, however, 
the shadowy image in a mirror : it is more like a projected 
statue. The Divine Mind is thus really mirrored in all the 
forms of the universe ; but it is in objective, living, moving 
forms, which have no life but that which flows into them from 
interior sources. 

We can now understand some of Swedenborg's stupendous 
generalizations : that man is a miniature image of the Lord, 
a miniature heaven, a miniature hell, a miniature Word, a 
miniature church, a miniature universe. To find the Lord, 
heaven, hell, the Word, the church, the world, the planets, 
the universe, a man never need go out of himself. All these 
things are inside of him, and rest upon his natural plane of life 
like a house upon its foundations. To find them all he must 
look within ; and he will find them, see them, know them in 
proportion as the organic windows and doors of his own spirit- 
ual organization and the corresponding degrees of sensation 
and consciousness, are opened toward them. 

This is the key to many wonderful phenomena, to many 
mysteries in the Word of God, and to Swedenborg's own ex- 
28* 



33° THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES, 

Uaordinary career. Revelation is always made by intromis- 
sion — a sending within. 

Swedenborg has achieved more in this way than any human 
being that ever lived ; not by any miracle or any special work 
of the Lord, but by the orderly unfoldings of his own spirit 
in the due course of the evolution of the race. And the pos- 
sibilities in that direction are absolutely limitless. 

No man ever had an original thought — a thought which 
sprang solely from himself. We think by influx of thought 
from the spiritual world. The Divine wisdom — the infinity 
of thought — flows into the organic forms of the celestial 
spheres, and produces the wisdom of their inhabitants. This 
wisdom flowing into the corresponding forms of the spiritual 
heaven beneath, becomes the intelligence of that middle 
sphere. Thence it passes to the ultimate heaven, thence into 
the world of spirits, and finally into the minds of men, losing 
at every successive descending step immeasurable portions of 
its beauty, glory, and power. It is only ours when it de- 
scends into us from above and becomes ours by appropriation. 
There is, therefore, no such thing as natural thought excited 
by natural phenomena. (A. C. 6322, 3679.) Spiritual 
thought becomes what we call natural thought, when we are 
brought to a consciousness of it by the natural phenomena 
which correspond to it and represent it. (A. C. 4526.) 
These successive changes of the same thought may be vaguely 
compared to the different appearances of the same substance, 
in steam, water, and ice. 

It is absolutely true that "a man can receive nothing ex- 
cept it be given him from heaven." Swedenborg affirms that 
even scientific truths in the external natural, are given to man 
by influx from the Lord, and are not acquired by any power 
of his own. (A. C. 4151, 5649, 5660.) He also says, if 
man were in the true order of life, the order in which he was 
created (and to which he must return), wisdom, intelligence, 



OPENING OF THE INTERIORS. 33 1 

and science would flow down from within to his exterior con- 
sciousness. If all the knowledges and sciences of the present 
day were utterly obliterated from the human mind, they could 
be reproduced, if it pleased the Lord, increased a thousand- 
fold, through regenerating mediums ; and the mouths of spir- 
itual " babes and sucklings" could utter them far more 
readily and perfectly than the most capable and learned men 
in the world. 

The celestial, spiritual, and rational degrees which exist in 
simultaneous order in each individual, connect him with the 
three heavens, — the Divine life flowing through the celestial 
of the third heaven into the celestial of the second heaven, 
thence into the celestial of the ultimate heaven, and thence 
into the inmost degree of the human mind on earth. There- 
fore each man is organically connected with the Lord and 
with the entire universe ; and by the opening of degrees and 
extensions of affections and thoughts into societies, he might 
be brought into visible, audible, emotional, and sensational 
contact with everything in the universe without ever leaving 
his natural body, which, with its indwelling soul, is a least 
form or miniature of the whole. 

It is, therefore, not at all incredible that Andrew Jackson 
Davis when an ignorant boy of nineteen, had a great volume 
of immense learning and genius filtered through his mind 
from the spiritual world above and within him. That, how- 
ever, is no reason for accepting a communication from the inte- 
rior ; for the evil and the false as well as the good and the true 
flow into us from the spiritual world. It is not at all incred- 
ible that an old negro woman in Brooklyn, as some of our 
friends there affirm, was taught the True Christian Religion 
from within, without knowing anything of the external book 
which it is our privilege to read. Nor is it incredible that 
Madam Bourignon, an old Catholic mystic, whose external 
acquaintance with the Bible was exceedingly slight, had the 



33 2 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMATES. 

Word of God given to her from within, with many beautiful 
perceptions of its more interior significations and their teach- 
ings. And it is not only possible but absolutely true, that a 
friend of mine, whose case I have carefully studied for many 
years, received a knowledge of the doctrines of the New 
Church and much of the spiritual sense of the Word of God, 
without having read a line of Swedenborg or any of his ex- 
positors. 

Yes, my dear reader, it is true : you have all things within 
yourself — royal avenues through all the kingdoms of heaven 
upward and inward to the Lord — dark and devious and ter- 
rible pathways downward through all the hells into the neth- 
ermost abyss. You are susceptible to all Divine influences ; 
you are capable of committing the whole catalogue of crimes. 
You are possessed of all knowledges, all power, all delight. 
The entire organic universe is inscribed upon your mental 
structures as the sun and the sky are pictured in the drop of 
dew. Your apparent life, as felt by yourself, is that little in- 
finitesimal fragment of the life, affection, thought, and actions 
buried within you, which comes to the surface of your organic 
frame and is consciously realized- as your own. What part 
and how much of the infinity within you comes to the sur- 
face, depends entirely upon what windows and doors in your 
soul leading out into the heavens and the hells, are opened 
and what are shut. 

With the opening of the interiors all things are possible. 
Heaven was lost by their closure, it will be regained by their 
unfolding. By the opening of the interiors, the Holy Spirit, 
the Comforter, descends and leads us into all truth. Regen- 
eration is an opening of the interiors. The judgment is an 
opening of the interiors. The coming of the Lord is an 
opening of the interiors. The final and perfect Church will 
be an opening of the interiors, so that the heavens and the 
earth shall be as one in affection, thought, and conduct. 



OPENING OF THE INTERIORS. 333 

Alas! for those who think that the heavens have been 
opened but one time in our modern ages, and then closed in- 
definitely, leaving the race in its natural darkness to be taught 
and governed by a new ecclesiasticism built upon the doc- 
trines of the gifted seer. Swedenborg was but one product 
of the openings which preceded him, and one cause of the 
openings which have followed. He was but one of our " fel- 
low-servants and brethren." 

The openings of the celestial, spiritual, rational, natural 
spheres of the human mind in the last century, have been 
very numerous; imperfect, partial, indefinite, abortive it may 
be, but they were beginnings which are progressive. Open- 
ings are now going on everywhere, bringing the spiritual and 
the natural spheres into closer conscious communion. The 
very air is full of spirits, and the ultimate heaven hangs im- 
mediately over us, or, in more philosophical terms, is about to 
burst forth within us. 

Hear what the Spirit saith : 

" Open thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things 

out of thy law. ' ' 

" O Lord open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth 
thy praise. ' ' 

" Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. ' 9 

"Behold I stand at the door and knock : if any man hear 
my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will 
sup with him and he with me. ' ' 

"Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God 
ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. ' ' 

"The kingdom of heaven is within you." 

"And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming 
down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride ador?ied 
for her husband. ' ' 

"And I heard a great voice out of heaven, saying, Behold 
the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with 
them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be 
with them, their God." 



334 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

The whole question of regeneration depends on the open- 
ing of the interiors. Unless they are opened above the natu- 
ral degree, and planes are formed in the celestial, spiritual, 
and rational spheres for the arrest and appropriation of the 
Divine life, that life will pass entirely through the interiors 
of the man into the natural plane, into which the hells flow, 
and it will then be turned into false and filthy forms so that 
men become selfish, devilish, and bestial. In proportion as 
interior openings occur, man is brought into contact with 
new societies of angels and into new heavens, with larger 
multiplication of truths and richer fructification of goods. 

Swedenborg repeatedly declares that man at present is in a 
state of inverted order, utterly immersed in the sensual life, 
with little or no thought or love of spiritual things ; but that 
if the order were reversed, in other words, if he laid down 
his own inverted life and entered into the life of Jesus Christ, 
he would be delivered from the terrible bondage of sensual- 
ism, would become conscious of spiritual things, have com- 
munication with spirits and angels, be gifted with heavenly 
perceptions of truth, recover the lost sciences and correspond- 
ences of the ancient church ; and, living and thinking con- 
sciously from within outward, he would perceive that nature 
was nothing but the representative image in ultimates of the 
Lord's kingdom in the heavens, and would assign to all natu- 
ral things the low and humble position and use for which 
they were created. Why should the receivers of the heavenly 
doctrines, who are under the divine protection of the Lord, 
shrink from the contemplation of these sublime possibilities? 
— these states which must be realized upon earth, unless the 
Divine Man shall fail in his work of redemption, which it is 
blasphemous to suppose. 

The phenomena attending an opening of the interiors must 
be exceedingly various. The opening may be only of the in- 
terior-natural plane of the mind, which connects us with the 



OPENING OF THE INTERIORS, 335 

world of spirits and thereby with heaven or hell. Or it may 
be an opening of the internal man who is celestial, spiritual, 
and rational ; and the opening may take place into any one 
of those degrees which connect him with the three heavens, 
into each successively, or into all at once. Any of these 
openings may be partial or complete — of a single sense, hear- 
ing, sight or touch, or of the whole man ; and his rapports or 
communications may have infinite variations of extent and 
character. 

The degrees below may be shut or closed. The phe- 
nomena of trance and somnambulism occur when the sensuo- 
corporeal degree is quiescent or unconscious, and the interior- 
natural is open. I think the phenomena of being carried 
unconsciously from one place to another physically, whilst 
engaged with spiritual scenes, as in the experience of the 
apostle Philip and of Swedenborg, is of a similar character. 
The natural plane may be thoroughly closed whilst one or 
more of the interior planes are opened, when the man would 
be as it were taken out of his body, and elevated into one of 
the heavens within him. 

The interior degree of life, the heaven in which we are 
hereafter to live, and the very society of that heaven, are all 
opened unconsciously in us and to us according to the life we 
have lived upon earth ; for we really live simultaneously in 
both worlds. If the natural plane of the human mind was 
opened to a consciousness of the influxes descending into it, 
the man regenerating in the celestial kingdom of either de- 
gree, would find himself in more or less developed states of 
celestial perception, unitized sex, and heavenly wisdom : the 
man regenerating in the spiritual kingdom of either degree, 
would find himself in states of spiritual intelligence and a 
I knowledge of the spiritual sense of the Word ; while a man 
not regenerating at all, but opened into the interior-natural, 
the degree of the world of spirits, would come into more or 



33^ THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES, 

less audible, visible, and sensational contact with mixed spir- 
its of all sorts, and even with the demons from the hells. 
Thence flow the direful persuasions and falsities of modern 
spiritism, and the danger of having anything to do with it 
outside of faith in the Divine Man and the protection of his 
presence. 

There are two misapprehensions about the opening of the 
interiors — universal in the Old Church, too common in the 
New — which need correction. One is, that a man cannot 
be opened into celestial and spiritual spheres, unless he is 
an exceedingly holy man, far advanced in the work of re- 
generation.' This idea is radically false. No man can live 
permanently in those spheres, and be associated and conso- 
ciated with the angels there, unless he has become organically 
celestial or spiritual. But any man, good or bad — any spirit, 
good or bad — having celestial remains within him, may be 
introduced into those atmospheres, may see and comprehend 
things before invisible and incomprehensible ; and if the 
natural plane of the mind were simultaneously opened, as 
in the case of my friend, he might reveal the spiritual 
mysteries of the inner world, so far as realized by himself, 
just as well as Swedenborg or any other seer. This is the 
reason why the person communicating is nothing, and the 
only authority for truth is the truth itself. 

Another misapprehension is, that the Lord must have an 
exceedingly pure and holy medium through whom to mani- 
fest Himself to men. This is contrary to the teachings of 
biblical history, and to the philosophy of Swedenborg. The 
men who represented the Lord among the Jews, and through 
whom the Lord spake and acted, as Abraham, Moses, David, 
etc., were wholly unregenerate men. The difference between 
"the celestial remains," or "the human internals" (H. & 
H. 39) of the lowest man and the highest angel, must be 
to the Lord entirely inappreciable. By the opening of the 



OPENING OF THE INTERIORS. S37 

interiors to the descent of his life, and by the quiescence 
of the proprium which is equally evil in angels and devils, 
He can infill the organic human form (whosoever it may be) 
with his presence, and speak in the first person. Were the 
natural plane of the human mind thoroughly open to spiritual 
influxes, as it was with the Most Ancient Church, the Lord 
might appear and speak to us now as He did to them. Nor 
would the Lord select the man on account of his personal 
excellencies, as men suppose — all men and angels being in 
themselves equally evil — but on account of his organic recep- 
tivities, and the infinitely varied and consociated uses of the 
divine economy. 

The human race began in the celestial degree of life. It 
lapsed into the spiritual, and thence into the natural, and 
thence into the sensuo-corporeal. Each individual follows 
the same course, the angels from the celestial heavens guard- 
ing his infancy, and new and lower societies being opened 
to him as he sinks downward and outward, closing the planes 
behind him. 

If a man were successively opened from the celestial degree 
downward, with interior perceptions of the course and phe- 
nomena of his regeneration, it would appear to him that he 
had been receding from the Lord all the time, and that the 
Lord had followed him downward step by step ; nor would 
he realize the true power of the spiritual forces within him, 
until they obtained their ultimate forms in the lowest degree 
of life. 

The Lord is the Divine-Celestial, Divine-Spiritual, and 
Divine-Natural Man ; and when the men of ancient times 
sank downward from one degree to another, and the heavens 
were closed behind them, they passed by degrees out of the 
Lord, out of his Word, out of his Church, and would have 
perished in sensualism and animalism, had not the Lord 
descended and assumed a human form for their redemption. 
29 W 



33^ THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

He bowed the heavens and came down. He clothed Him- 
self successively with the atmospheres of the three heavens ; 
and by his perfect union with the Father — the Father de- 
scending with Him and abiding with Him — He re-opened 
those closed degrees of life in his own glorified Humanity, 
making it possible for men to be opened again into the 
heavens by a work in their souls similar to that which our 
Lord effected in Himself. 

The Lord has thus opened all the heavens in his own glori- 
fied Personality, and is ready to open them all in us according 
to our states of love, faith, and receptivity. He has thus been 
standing, as it were, for eighteen centuries, inviting us to Him- 
self — Divine even as to his flesh and bones, and able to spir- 
itualize us, our whole being from centre to circumference. 
What more is necessary ? — what more is possible ? 

Alas ! the whole history of Christianity — the present dead 
state of the church and the evil state of the world, the pres- 
ence of the rider on the pale horse among us — all things, show 
that much more is necessary, that much more is possible ; that 
this incarnation of Jehovah, this first Advent of our Lord, was 
not a finality, but only a means to an end — a great step, but 
not the last one in the work of redemption. 

In opening the interior degrees of his own life, the Lord 
did not open them in any one else, for He respects always the 
free agency of man, and He only knocks at the door of the 
human heart, waiting for the human will to open it. In his 
elevation, however, He draws all men unto Him. What hin- 
ders that his divine love does not draw all men into spiritual 
union with his glorified Humanity ? Organic obstructions, 
hereditary and self-erected, in our own wills and our own un- 
derstandings against his descent — organic closure of the in- 
terior degrees of life. Why has it taken eighteen hundred 
years of organic preparations for their re-opening? Only a 
perfected philosophy of history can answer that question. 



OPENING OF THE INTERIORS. 339 

It was necessary for Him to go away and to come again. 
Now the Lord Himself never goes away, never comes again. 
The apparent motion in Him is due always to a real motion in 
us. Why did the Lord ever disappear from his infant Church 
and the world ? What is the meaning of his ascension ? He 
disappeared from his disciples because they possessed no or- 
ganic states of life and doctrine which could keep hold of Him 
and make them feel and know that He was always present. 
They were like spirits of a low degree, elevated by special 
arrangements of societies into one of the superior heavens, 
where they saw and understood all the wonderful things about 
them ; but so soon as they were remanded into their own states 
of life and will, everything vanished from their sight. He 
disappeared from them because the celestial and spiritual de- 
grees of their minds were closed, their organic conditions for- 
bidding that they should remain open. 

The Lord, however, is always present with us in the celes- 
tial degree of our life ; for He flows into our goods, but not 
into our truths unless they correspond to our goods. He tar- 
ries always with John, but He disappears from Peter. John 
and Matthew give no account of his ascension, no hint that 
He was ever taken away from the world. John is the celes- 
tial-rational, and Matthew, who gives the full Sermon on the 
Mount, is the celestial-natural man : Luke being the spiritual- 
rational and Mark the spiritual-natural man. The Lord sups 
with the celestial-rational man, and he with Him ; He takes 
him to his bosom ; He gives his mother — the affection for all 
divine truth — into his keeping ; He reveals Himself to him in 
apocalyptic splendors ; He tarries always with him ; they are 
never parted. And to the celestial-natural man, the celestial 
in ultimates as our Lord Himself was, He says, "Lo I am with 
you always, even to the end of the world." 

The angels have a continual perception of the presence of 
the Lord (A. C. 5962, '3), and so would men upon earth, if 



34° THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMATES. 

the celestial, spiritual, and rational degrees of their life were 
consciously opened into the natural, so that the Lord with his 
holy angels could flow into it. This would be the Second 
Coming of the Lord, indeed — a descent, not into the external 
atmospheres as a human Personality, and not merely into the 
opened mind as the Divine Truth, but a descent into the 
entire Body of Humanity, filling all its degrees, celestial, 
spiritual, rational, and natural, with the conscious life of 
heaven. 

When the disciples were gazing after the vanishing figure of 
their Lord, the angels said unto them : 

' ' This same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven, 
shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go i?ito 

heaven. ' f 

He was taken away from them by the closure of the interior 
degrees of life and thought which had been temporarily opened 
in them. The cloud which carried Him out of sight, was not 
only the cloud of literalism which prevented them from see- 
ing the divine truth, but also the cloud of their own carnalism 
which separated them from the divine good. How is He to 
re-appear ? for He has really never been away. How are we 
to see Him, know Him, feel Him again? He will re-appear, 
and it will be the judgment to us all, by the re-opening, ac- 
cording to the laws of order, of the degrees which are closed. 
This great work has already begun, and will henceforth be 
continuously done by the Lord alone ; for no one else can 
open the book of life but the Lion of the tribe of Judah, whose 
other more interior and celestial name is the Lamb of God. 

The Second Coming of the Lord into the Body of Human- 
ity is effected, according to the order of creation and the 
laws of influx, degrees, and correspondence, by the successive 
opening of the celestial, spiritual, and natural degrees of the 
human mind. The wonderful phenomena of this Event, 
now rapidly progressing, will be considered in another essay. 



ESSAY II. 

THE LORD'S DESCENT THROUGH THE HEAVENS. 

WHY did our Lord incarnate Himself in this particular 
earth of the universe ? 
Swedenborg gives two weighty reasons : 

First : Because the inhabitants of our earth correspond to the 
external, corporeal, and ultimate principles in the Grand Man. 
The Lord would not have been the Alpha and the Omega, 
the First and the Last, nor would He have acquired to Him- 
self in his glorified Humanity all power in heaven and earth, 
unless He had appeared in human form in some world bear- 
ing that specific and organic relation to the rest of his created 
universe. 

Second : Because the Word which connects heaven and 
earth, the internal with the external, could be revealed in its 
natural and literal forms, in which E. S. declares the fullness 
of its power resides, only on such an earth holding such ulti- 
mate relations to all the heavens. And as there are no spaces 
or times in the spiritual world; the ultimation of our Lord 
and his Word on this globe alone, makes them manifest, as 
Swedenborg says, "to all in the universe, who come into 
heaven from any other earth whatsoever. ' ' (A. C. 9356.) 

Our world, then, has been the seat of the most stupendous 
phenomena; the revelation through organic media, and in 
its lowest ultimate forms, of that Divine Truth which pervades 
the spiritual universe ; and the incarnation of the Supreme 
Being, his presentation in our midst with objective forms, 
conditions, and circumstances, corresponding to the subjec- 
tive states of human receptivity. Our world is the ultimate 
2 9* 34i 



342 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

battle-field between heaven and hell — the basis of that ladder 
of descent and ascent upon which the divine powers are 
manifested — the theatre upon which the transcendent work 
of Redemption is being wrought. The reality and fullness 
of that Redemption — the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ has 
all power in heaven and earth, that He is the Alpha and the 
Omega, the Beginning and the Ending, the First and the 
Last, the All-in-all from centres to circumferences, from pri- 
maries to ultimates, will be stamped ineffaceably upon the 
future history of this little globe ; for all power is in ultimates. 

Therefore the prophecies of the Word, infinitely outreach- 
ing the vision of Swedenborg who supposed all things would 
go on as before, declare that the old order of things shall ut- 
terly perish, and all things be made new ; that the power of 
evil shall be radically destroyed ; that God Himself shall 
tabernacle with men, and his divine law be written on every 
heart, so that heaven and earth shall be one in spirit, faith, 
and action, bound together in the indissoluble perfection of 
the divine order. 

This happy and enduring state of things will be brought 
about by the Second Coming of the Lord ; or, to use a more 
philosophical expression, by the Descent of the Lord into 
Ultimates. 

The first coming of the Lord was also a descent into ulti- 
mates, but under different conditions and with different re- 
sults. He bowed the heavens and came down, clothing 
Himself with each successive degree of life, until He appeared 
in the ultimates of nature with flesh and bones like our own. 
Nothing but Swedenborg' s doctrines of the organic coher- 
ence and successive derivation of all things, his doctrine of 
discrete degrees, influx, and correspondence, and his declara- 
tion that each human being is a miniature or least form of 
the universe, can make the incarnation and glorification of 
Jehovah at all comprehensible. 



HIS DESCENT THROUGH THE HEAVENS. 343 

Our Lord apparently descended the ladder of life as the 
Son of God, the Divine Proceeding from the Father, and 
ultimated Himself in a miniature or least form of the uni- 
verse. From that form He re-ascended to the Father, by 
extensions of affection and thought into societies and into 
heaven after heaven throughout the universe, until He took 
upon Himself all the states of men, spirits, and angels. 
From one point of view, He is the man Jesus Christ — a least 
form of the universe like ourselves, baptized and praying, and 
looking upward until the heavens are opened unto Him. 
From the other point of view, He is the Divine Man — the 
sole life and power in the spiritual universe. (A. C. 3637.) 

The Lord disappeared from his disciples and ascended to 
the Father, because the interior degrees of the human mind 
were closed, and the divine-natural, the divine-rational, the 
divine-spiritual, the divine-celestial could not be seen, felt, 
or comprehended in the dark clouds of literalism and carnal- 
ism which shrouded the world. The work of Redemption 
was but half accomplished. Order was restored, but only 
upon the spiritual side ; for the earth was the seat of increas- 
ing anarchy, misery, and crime. The Divine Man had con- 
quered the hells, but only in his own person ; for they have 
ever since darkened and saddened the hearts and minds of 
men. And so his church has gone on through centuries of 
suffering, temptation, and doubt. The world has lost all faith 
in spiritual things. His children are "eating and drinking, 
and buying and selling," and making all sorts of base com- 
promises with the world, the flesh, and the devil, saying in 
their hearts, " My Lord delayeth his coming." 

Now what is this Second Coming of the Lord which has 
been so clearly promised, so ardently expected, so long de- 
layed, and so utterly misunderstood ? 

The Old-Church theory of the literal, personal 'descent of 
the Lord into the clouds of heaven, has no weight with those 



344 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

whom the spiritual sense of the Word has delivered from the 
gross materialism of the letter. It is needless to refute a lit- 
eral dogma or series of dogmas founded on sensuous appear- 
ances, which, however weighted with authorities and respec- 
tabilities, will dissolve away on the presentation of a rational 
philosophy of the connection between the spiritual and the 
natural universe. 

The theory of T. L. Harris, that by organic preparations 
made in the spiritual world, the Lord is about to descend 
into ultimates through himself as pivotal man and spiritual 
King, seems to be only the dark shadow of the old Babylon 
cast upon the sphere of the New Church, and may be safely 
consigned to the realm of stupendous fantasies. 

The majority of the readers of Swedenborg believe that the 
Second Coming of the Lord is the unfolding of the spiritual 
sense of the Word : and that the New Jerusalem descending 
from God out of heaven, is an external Church which shall 
derive its doctrinals from that sense, and preach the life cor- 
responding to them. 

Now this is true, and a truth so vast and essential that its 
character can never be overestimated, nor its meaning fully 
comprehended. The riches of divine truth drawn from the 
Word by Swedenborg, whose receptive mind was directly 
illumined by the Lord for that purpose, are inexhaustible, 
and constitute the rational and intellectual basis upon which 
the external Church of the future will stand forever, however 
many different forms it may assume. 

But in recognizing the revelation of the spiritual sense as a 
veritable coming of the Son of Man into the clouds of 
heaven, have we grasped or exhausted the whole meaning of 
the Second Coming of the Lord ? Have we not a part only ? 
Is it not a means to an end, and not the end itself? Is it 
not rathef a middle term, a cause, an instrumental means 
whereby an end can be carried into effect ? 



HIS DESCENT THROUGH THE HEAVENS. 345 

Man is not saved by faith alone, or by truth alone. Truth 
alone, however lofty its degree, does not form the Lord's 
Church. The Lord cannot come to us so as to abide with 
us in truth alone. The understandings of men and spirits 
can be elevated into the divine light of the heavens above 
them, so as to comprehend the spiritual mysteries of truth, 
but it does them no good ; it is barren and fruitless unless 
the will also has been elevated into a corresponding heat 
of the superior degrees. Truths are mere vessels for the 
reception of something greater and more living. 

The Ancient Church from Noah to Abraham, was in pos- 
session of most of the spiritual truths offered us by Sweden- 
borg ; but its people perverted, falsified, and finally lost them 
entirely. Their mere restoration in the present age, can de- 
velop nothing but an ecclesiastical Intellectualism. And why 
is it that we cannot point to a general, genuine manifestation 
of the heavenly life in the thousands of so-called Newchurch- 
men who have believed and loved the spiritual sense of the 
Word ? Is it not because they have accepted the coming of 
the Lord as a manifestation of divine truth to their under- 
standings, and know nothing of Him as the Divine Man 
entering, and entering to abide, into all the degrees of life, 
celestial, spiritual, and natural — individual and general ? — 
Swedenborg's mission and all its phenomena being only the 
consequence of his passage through the spiritual degree. 

Let us consider this subject in the light of the spiritual 
philosophy of Swedenborg. Why do we speak of the de- 
scent of the Lord into ultimates, when we know that, on 
account of the glorification of his Humanity, He is already 
and always in ultimates, even as to the principles represented 
by flesh and bones ? It is because the degrees of the human 
mind are closed to the reception and acknowledgment of that 
transcendent truth, and to the glorious consequences which 
follow the living consciousness of the presence of the Lord 



34-6 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

in ultimates. To know that He is here is one thing, a mere 
article of faith ; to feel that He is here, tabernacling and 
abiding in our souls and bodies, is another and a different 
thing. This latter is a life — the life of heaven. The first 
was the privilege of the Old Church, — " for lo ! I am with 
you always even to the end of the world/ ' The last belongs 
only to the New Jerusalem descending from God out of 
heaven. 

It was necessary for the Lord to go away ; for the human 
race, even "his own," could not receive Him, or hold Him, 
or live Him out in ultimates. It was necessary for Him to 
come again to finish his work of redemption. Nearly nine- 
teen centuries of our time have been employed in organic 
preparations for that descent. It is going on now with ever- 
increasing rapidity. It is a descent from highest to lowest, 
from primaries to ultimates, from centre to circumference. 
It is a successive opening of the celestial, spiritual, and natural 
degrees of human life — which will go on, both in the indi- 
vidual and in the race, until the Lord infills the world with 
his presence through the general Body of Humanity, just as 
He fills the heavens with his presence through the angels, and 
becomes the Grand Man. It is thus that the Lord will de- 
scend with his holy angels, and heaven and earth be united 
in one Church, with many varieties, multiplicity in unity. 
It is thus that the will of God will be done upon earth even 
as it is in heaven. Then will the Lord reign supreme, from 
that "inmost heaven" in the spirits of men and angels, 
"known only to Himself/ ' down through all his creation, 
into the very sensuo-corporeal principles of the inhabitants 
of this ultimate earth in the universe. 

The opening of the celestial degree of the human mind 
for the Lord's descent into ultimates, began partially in the 
interior of Africa, a little before the spiritual sense of the 
Word was revealed to Swedenborg. He first mentions the 



HIS DESCENT THROUGH THE HEAVENS. 34/ 

fact in a portion of the Spiritual Diary written about 1750-2, 
some years before the Last Judgment, and when he was pub- 
lishing the first volumes of the Arcana. But as he states that 
these revelations to certain people in Africa had been going 
on for a long time (" quod din habuerunt revelationes e ca>lo" 
— 4774), and even points out very considerable regions over 
which they had spread, it may be safely concluded that the 
opening began antecedently to his own opening into the 
spiritual degree. 

Why do we think this opening into the African mind was 
an opening of the celestial degree of life in the human race ? 
For several very cogent reasons : — 

Africa in the spiritual sense, is the east, or the state of life 
nearest to the love and wisdom of the Lord. (A. E. n. 21.) 
Swedenborg repeatedly says that the Africans are of the 
celestial type or genius ; the most beloved of all the gentiles 
in heaven ; the most capable of interior and intuitive percep- 
tions of truth, a state so very different from *its exterior ac- 
quisition. It was therefore into those children of the race, 
those relics of "the days which were before the flood, " that 
our Lord first descended or appeared, opening a degree of 
life which, historically speaking, had been long closed, vivi- 
fying "remains" which had been for ages quiescent, and 
thus rendering possible again the reproduction of the golden 
age and the celestial life upon earth. Thus was planted the 
invisible seed of that tree of life, whose leaves are the divine 
truths revealed through Swedenborg, and whose fruit is not 
yet. 

Again, it was a celestial opening because it was not an ele- 
vation of those African minds into spiritual light such as 
Swedenborg enjoyed, but a direct dictation from the Lord, 
through good spirits and angels, of the simple doctrines of 
the Divine Humanity and the New-Church life. — Contin. L. 
J. n. 76. 



34^ THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

We may yet again infer that this was an opening of the 
celestial degree, from the following extraordinary statement 
of Swedenborg : " I heard the angels rejoicing over that rev- 
elation, because through it a communication was opened to 
them with human rationality [the human rational] till then 
closed up by the universal dogma, that the understanding 
should be held in obedience to the faith of the ecclesiastics.' ' 
(T. C. R. 840.) How many Newchurchmen have read these 
singular lines without any conception of their real bearing 
and immense importance ! 

The angels here state that by means of these revelations to 
the African mind, they have access, in a manner not pos- 
sessed before, to the rational sphere of human life. It is not 
a relation between the few angels speaking and the few Afri- 
cans instructed ; but it is a general relation, an avenue opened 
between the heavens and the earth, a new way or path of in- 
flux from angelic spheres into the rational faculty of man. 
Now it is the celestial with its good, that flows first into the 
rational and gives man that liberty and rationality without 
which all revelation of truth to him is utterly vain. Sweden- 
borg says that the celestial is the internal of the rational, as the 
spiritual is the internal of the natural : also, that the rational 
is predicated of the celestial man who has a perception of 
good and of truth from good, but not of the spiritual man, 
because he only knows truths by instruction and is properly 
called interior-natural. — A. C. 6240, 3747. 

The first step therefore of the Lord in his Second Coming, 
was to open the celestial degree of life, and establish a com- 
munication with the rational' sphere of human thought. Such 
js the organic connection of all spiritual things, and their in- 
dependence of natural times, spaces, and quantities (witness 
the spiritual power of the Jewish economy), that this open- 
ing, however limited in extent and duration, however secret, 
obscure, and unknown to the race, was the means whereby 



HIS DESCENT THROUGH THE HEAVENS. 349 

the angels could flow down and vivify the celestial remains 
and awaken the rational faculties of mankind. The con- 
cealed influences of that opening have been felt in every 
human heart and mind throughout the world ever since it 
happened. It is the heart of the New Church, the hidden 
spring whence have flowed all the emotional revivals of re- 
ligion, the love of liberty and truth, the renaissance of char- 
ity and brotherly love, and all the chastened and renewed 
affectional life of modern times. 

This opening could only have occurred among an obscure, 
ignorant, docile, childlike people, far removed from the con- 
taminating influences of our diseased civilization, and utterly 
unacquainted with the terrible falsifications and perversions 
of the Christian religion. Swedenborg, from the purely 
spiritual standpoint of his own mission, may not have seen 
this subject in* the full light with which we are now permitted 
to behold it ; but he saw clearly enough to call this opening 
among the Africans the initiament of the New Church and the 
advent of the Lord. 

In number 4770 of the Spiritual Diary, under the title, De 
Novce Ecclesice initiamento, he says : 

■•After the atheistic crowd which appeared within the 
Church had vanished, it was said by many that it was an- 
nounced, that somewhere among the nations a revelation 
from heaven has begun, that spirits and angels truly speak 
with them, and teach the celestial doctrine, especially con- 
cerning the Lord, and that they receive it, and that so the 
New Church springs forth out of heaven (et sic quod nova ec- 
clesia e coslo exsurgai)" 

Again, and with still more emphasis, he declares (S. D. 

4777): 

■•Thereupon the angels were gladdened, because now the 
advent of the Lord presses down (or begins working), and 
because the Church, which now perishes in Europe, may be 
30 



350 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

renewed or restored in Africa, and that this is being done by 
the Lord alone through revelations, and not by means of 
Christian missionaries. ' ' 

Thus Swedenborg, at the very time when he was unfolding 
the spiritual sense of the Word, and was in his full state of 
spiritual light, affirms that the initial steps of the coming of the 
Lord and the institution of his New Church, had already been 
made by direct revelations of the doctrine. of life to people 
who were capable of receiving it in the interior of Africa. 

Now there was something else involved in these extraordi- 
nary statements of Swedenborg, over and above what he him- 
self saw. In the spiritual sphere there is no Africa, Asia, or 
Europe, but the states or degrees of the human spirit to 
which they correspond. Africa represents the celestial degree 
everywhere and always, Asia the spiritual degree, and Europe 
the natural degree. The revelation of the doctrine of the 
new life to Africans, meant not only that literal fact but also 
the revival of celestial affections everywhere in persons of the 
celestial type — of whom Swedenborg says there were "rem- 
nants ' ' in Europe in his own day. It meant the opening of 
the celestial degree wherever possible, and its impregnation 
with the fire of the divine love. This is the true key to the 
extraordinary revival of the religious life in the Quietists, 
Moravians, Quakers, Methodists, and others for half a cen- 
tury antecedent to Swedenborg' s spiritual intromission. 

In his descent into ultimates, whether into his own natural 
body, or into our individual souls, which is regeneration, or 
into the general body of the race, the order -of the Lord's 
procedure is always the same. The law is that of influx 
through the celestial or sphere of affection, into the spiritual 
or sphere of thought, and thence into the natural or sphere 
of conduct and life. He has thus always three manifestations 
— as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ; as the Divine 
Love, the Divine Wisdom, and the Divine Power. 



HIS DESCENT THROUGH THE HEAVENS. 351 

Having therefore entered into the celestial degree of the 
race through the revelations in Africa and elsewhere, He 
proceeds by the laws of influx and correspondence to pass 
into the next discrete degree below, viz., the spiritual; and 
He there manifests Himself as the Divine Truth, and of 
necessity through the mind of the man best fitted at that time 
to receive, arrange, and publish to the world the spiritual 
truths of the Word in which the Lord Himself resides. That 
man was Emanuel Swedenborg. 

This "servant of the Lord" declares (T. C. R. 779) that, 
as the Lord cannot manifest Himself in person (that is, can- 
not appear in a material body as the Old-Church people have 
expected Him to do), He has manifested Himself spiritually 
to him — opened his spiritual senses into the heavens and the 
hells, and taught him the doctrines of his New Church, not 
through spirits or angels but from Himself alone, whilst he (the 
humble medium and agent) was reading the Word of God. 

By the laws and processes of spiritual consociation, radia- 
tion, and propagation from centres to circumferences, the 
descent of the Lord into the spiritual degree of the mind 
of Swedenborg, was virtually his descent into the spiritual 
sphere of the human race. It was the lightning which 
shineth from one end of the heavens unto the other. " Spir- 
itual light," says Swedenborg, "does not pass through 
space like the light of the world, but through the affections 
and the perceptions of truth, therefore in an instant, to the 
last limit of the heavens." It was the same coming of the 
Lord which had passed through the celestial, and was now 
manifested in the spiritual degree under suitable forms. The 
revelations of life to the Africans and others, and of life and 
doctrine to Swedenborg, are one and the same thing, by in- 
flux from the higher and correspondence in the lower degree. 
They are different but harmonious movements of the descend- 
ing Lord. 



35 2 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

Therefore the writings of Swedenborg, so far as they un- 
fold the spiritual sense of the Word and the doctrines of the 
New Jerusalem, are of supreme and unimpeachable authority. 
These writings are authoritative, not on account of the man 
whose relation to them was entirely mediumistic and imper- 
sonal, but on account of the Divine Truth in its spiritual de- 
gree (the Lord on his way into ultimates) which shines in 
and through them. By extension of affections and thoughts 
into heavenly societies, we may enjoy in future innumerable 
" multiplications of truths" and revelations of things never 
seen or heard by Swedenborg ; but they will be in thorough 
and organic harmony with all he has uttered ; they will be 
rivers of water flowing from this same fountain ; they will be 
leaves and flowers and fruit from the seed here planted. 

These openings or avenues of descent, were no doubt made 
from the celestial and spiritual kingdoms of the Lord in the 
ultimate heaven, into the corresponding celestial and spirit- 
ual degrees (in simultaneous order) of the human mind in 
the world of spirits, of which world we are all the time un- 
consciously inhabitants. Of the preparations made in the 
celestial and spiritual heavens for the Lord's descent into the 
celestial and spiritual of the ultimate heaven, we have no 
revelation and could probably form no conception. But we 
can easily understand that, when the spheres of the divine 
love and the divine wisdom found appropriate media and 
channels in the ultimate heaven connected with the world of 
spirits, the first effect would be a judgment upon those who 
were in mixed states of good and evil. Hence the phenom- 
ena of the Last Judgment in 1757. 

The opening of the celestial degree in the Africans and 
others, the illumination of the spiritual degree in Swedenborg, 
and the execution of the Last Judgment, were consecutive and 
associated phenomena, the first being preparatory to the second, 
and the first and second united being preparatory to the third. 



HIS DESCENT THROUGH THE HEAVENS. 353 

If the natural plane of the human mind throughout the race 
had been opened from above at that time, the Divine power 
manifested in the imaginary heavens by the upheaval and de- 
struction of all their institutions and surroundings, as described 
by Swedenborg, would have displayed itself in corresponding 
forms throughout the consummated church on earth and the 
world of nature. In mercy to mankind the gates were kept 
shut ; and although it is now imperative that they shall be 
opened, it will be done in the most gradual, gentle, and orderly 
manner. 

The descent of the Lord into the natural degree of the 
human mind, where He will not only build his temple but 
pitch his tabernacle and abide forever with men, is a subject 
of such vast importance that I must devote a separate essay 
to its consideration. We are surveying in the present essay 
only the grand, spiritual, organic preparations which have 
been made for that culmination of prophecy, that transcend- 
ent Event, 

"Toward which the whole creation moves." 

According to Swedenborg, the Christian heaven with its 
three degrees, celestial, spiritual, and natural, was a new 
heaven made up of the good who passed from the earth after 
the Incarnation ; and it was discretely separate from the ancient 
heavens which were peopled before the birth of Christ. It is 
from this new Christian heaven that the Lord's New Church, 
in which is the Lord Himself, descends upon earth. The 
spiritual sense of the 14th chapter of Revelation describes the 
process, and is worthy of profound study in connection with 
the views I have just advanced. 

"And I saw, and behold a Lamb standing upon Mount 
Zion, and with Him a hundred and forty-four thousand, 
having the name of his Father written upon their foreheads ." 

This indicates " the presence of the .Lord in heaven and 
30* X 



354 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

the church/ ! and it is in the celestial degree of heaven, the 
church and the human mind. This is plain, because " the 
Lamb " is the Lord in his Divine Humanity; Mount Zion is 
the state of celestial love ; the hundred and forty-four thou- 
sand are the angels who are in truths from the good of love ; 
the Father is the divine love itself; and " written on the fore- 
head" is acknowledgment from love and faith. (A. E. 612, 

It is still more clear that influx into the celestial sphere is 
meant, when we consider the spiritual meaning of the things 
which follow, the new song they sing, their being virgins 
without guile, without fault, following the Lamb, " the first- 
fruits ' ' of God and the Lamb, etc. All these forms corre- 
spond to celestial and not to spiritual things. 

Swedenborg says there is a perpetual presence of the Lord 
in the heavens and the church, whereby all things in the 
universe are kept in order and connection; "but," he con- 
tinues, " the presence which is here understood by standing 
upon Mount Zion is the extraordinary, active presence of the 
Lord, to the end that his Divine may flow in through the 
heavens into the lower parts, and there separate the good 
from the evil. ,, This flowing in of the Divine from the 
heavens into the lower parts, will continue even into the 
ultimates of nature. 

It was in connection and correspondence with this "extraor- 
dinary, active presence M of the Lord in the celestial heavens, 
and to bring the corresponding degree of the human mind 
into rapport with Him, that He vivified the "celestial re- 
mains' ' in Africa and elsewhere, and made the initial point 
of his coming and of his Church in the world. "Adventus 
Domini" was no doubt written on the books of Swedenborg 
in the spiritual world, indicating their use in the manifesta- 
tion of the Divine Truth; but " adventus domini et initia- 
mention ecclesice" — the coming of the Lord and the inaugu- 



HIS DESCENT THROUGH THE HEAVENS. 355 

ration of the Church — had already been inscribed on the 
hearts of his babes and sucklings, his " first-fruits, " by the 
Divine Love. 

This prophecy of the Lord's clothing Himself with the 
celestial heavens, so that He could enter by influx and corre- 
spondence into the celestial degree of the human race, is 
immediately followed by another which describes the sphere 
of divine truth in the spiritual heavens, preparing for the 
glorious manifestations of the everlasting gospel — the Lord's 
advent and the New Church upon earth. 

(C And I saw a?iother angel fly in the midst of heaven, 
having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell 
on the earth, and to every nation, and tribe, and tongue, and 
people. ' ' 

It was in connection and correspondence with this ^ex- 
traordinary, active presence" of the Lord in the spiritual 
heavens, that the spiritual degree of the human mind was 
opened first in Swedenborg, and the spiritual sense of the 
Word was revealed to mankind. This is the coming of the 
Son of Man in the clouds of heaven — the middle term of 
the Second Advent of the Lord. 

The divine influx with its " extraordinary, active presence " 
is then continued downward into the ultimate heaven ; for 
the next verse of the prophecy says : 

"And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon, that 
great city, is fallen, is fallen,'" etc. 

This angel and a third who follows, represent, according 
to Swedenborg, the truths from the Lord which brought into 
judgment the imaginary heaven of the Catholics and the 
Reformed Church, whose externals corresponded with those 
of the ultimate heaven, so that they were conjoined with 
" the lower parts " of that heaven, and intercepted the light 
of that heaven flowing into the world of spirits. The last 



35^ THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

judgment was not executed upon those in the world of spirits 
(L. J. 69 ; Contin. L. J. 30), but upon those who were organ- 
ically connected with the ultimate heaven. The world of 
spirits received as much light as the men on earth did, from 
the removal of the vast spiritual cloud which shut out the 
light of heaven. 

The ultimate heaven is sometimes called by Swedenborg 
the natural heaven, and its inhabitants are sometimes called 
the interior-natural, sometimes the rational. From and 
through that heaven flow the spiritual forces which make us 
rational, and which, by means of the rational, connect the 
spiritual and natural together in mutual correspondence. So 
that when our Lord clothed Himself with the three heavens, 
or descended into them with "an extraordinary, active pres- 
ence/ ' and when He opened the corresponding degrees in 
the celestial, spiritual, and rational planes of human life, by 
the revelation to the Africans and others, the illumination 
of Swedenborg, and the execution of the Last Judgment, 
He obtained a new and interior access to the human race. 

What is to be the end of all this ? The establishment of 
a single organized Church which is to evangelize the world 
by preaching a new system of spiritual truth according to the 
old methods? The ecclesiastical proprium, both lay and 
clerical, can find many cogent and gratifying reasons for so 
believing ; but what does Swedenborg say about it ? He 
says that the Advent of the Lord and the inauguration of 
the New Church began by dictation from the Lord through 
angels and good spirits — a kind of Christian spiritualism 
leading to a new life — in the interior of Africa. He says 
his own writings constitute an authorized revelation of 
spiritual truth from the Lord, and are the coming of the 
Lord as to that Truth. He says, moreover, that in the year 
1770 the Lord called his twelve Apostles together, and com- 
manded them to preach this new gospel throughout the spir- 



HIS DESCENT THROUGH THE HEAVENS. 357 

itual world. The Lord, however, makes no provision through 
his illumined mind for the establishment of a church or the 
preaching of its doctrines on earth. Swedenborg's only- 
mission was the enunciation of truth, and his only agent 
the press. He kept aloof from the Old-Church organizations, 
and made no movement toward the organization of a New 
one. 

The New Church is a celestial life, with its corresponding 
body of spiritual doctrine. It is the Bride, the Lamb's wife. 
It is no tower of Babel built up from the ground of literalism, 
and aspiring to the heavens. It is built in the heavens and 
in the heavenly life of the individual, and, unlike all other 
churches, descends from above. It is coming, but it is not 
come. It is indeed the Lord Himself, descending from pri- 
mates to ultimates, passing from centres to circumferences, 
to ultimate Himself in the Body of Humanity, and to be 
upon earth what He is in the heavens, the all-in-all. He 
will thus unite the Grand Man, from the inmost celestial to 
the external-sensual (to which our earth corresponds) into a 
perfect whole, and so be the First and the Last forever. The 
New Church will be simply heaven upon earth. 

The descent of the Lord into the world of spirits, which 
is the sphere of our natural life above its animal basis, the 
continuous opening of the three degrees of the life of men, 
the prolongation of the judgment, the subjugation of the pro- 
prium, the expulsion of the hells, the redemption of our souls 
and bodies, the reconstruction of nature and the "restitution 
of all things ' ' will be considered in the next essay. 



ESSAY III. 

THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO THE NATURAL PLANE OF 
THE HUMAN MIND. 

THE Son of Man who is revealed in the clouds of heaven 
is not the Divine Humanity, but only one phase of it. 
He is the Lord as to the Divine Truth only, and his 
coming is the revelation of the spiritual sense of the Word, 
which was made through the instrumentality of Swedenborg. 
These spiritual truths are for the use of the angels, and of the 
men of the coming Church who shall be in rapport with an- 
gels. They do not constitute a church, least of all the final 
New Church which is a life flowing from conjugial love and 
the genuine marriage of good and truth. Until that regener- 
ated state of the sexual sphere descends from heaven, the 
spiritual truths revealed through Swedenborg are little more 
than dead scientiflcs in the mind. And every effort at 
church organization on the basis of spiritual truth, which 
does not involve the vivification of celestial remains and the 
regeneration of the conjugial sphere, is the work of the eccle- 
siastical proprium inherent in us all, to seize and appropriate 
divine truths for its own benefit and gratification, and is 
thoroughly Old-Church in spirit. 

The general expectation of the Christian world, the spirit- 
ual philosophy of Swedenborg, and the reiterated prophecies 
of the Word, all demand that the Second Coming of the 
Lord in its full and final sense, shall be something more, 
something larger and grander, something more organic and 
universal than a revelation of spiritual truth, however impor- 
tant a part the latter may play in its accomplishment. 

The Second Coming of the Lord is the transflux of the 

358 



INTO THE NATURAL PLANE OF THE MIND. 359 

Divine Humanity from primaries to ultimates, through the 
three heavens in successive order ; and its corresponding 
transflux through the degrees of the human mind in simulta- 
neous order from centres to circumferences. It will be a 
successive opening of the celestial, spiritual, and natural de- 
grees of human life \ and a corresponding simultaneous devel- 
opment of religious affection, thought, and conduct. It will 
be the reappearance of " this same Jesus' ' on the ultimate 
plane of the human mind. It will be the unfolding of the 
New Jerusalem " from God out of heaven." It will be the 
coming of the Bridegroom; and the Bride, " the Lamb's 
wife," will be the New Church, whose starting point is the 
celestial life and the conjugial love. 

The Second Coming of the Lord, by the organic laws of 
the spiritual universe, cannot stop at the coming into the 
ultimate heaven, and the Last Judgment upon the imaginary 
heavens which had been reared between the ultimate heaven 
and the world of spirits. It must be final and complete; it 
must pass down into the world of spirits, and through the 
natural plane of the human mind into nature itself in all its 
elements and all its departments. 

The rational mind can see that such must be the case by 
the light of illustration from the Word, whether the state- 
ment can be found in Swedenborg or not. It must be so, 
because the Lord is the Alpha and the Omega : because the 
natural sphere is the ultimate, basis, and containant of the 
spiritual : because all power is in ultimates : because the 
Lord was born upon our earth, and assumed our humanity, 
and glorified it even as to its flesh and bones, and has prom- 
ised to reappear to us upon the lowest plane of life : and 
finally, because our world corresponds to the external sensual 
principle in the Grand Man ; and the Lord cannot truly 
reach and save us, unless He descends to our own organic 
level and conjoins us with Himself. 



360 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

Therefore, after clothing Himself with the three heavens 
and executing the Last Judgment (not in the world of spir- 
its itself, but in the provisional world, the imaginary heav- 
ens which were attached by similar externals to the ultimate 
heaven), our Lord proceeds to descend into the natural plane 
of the human mind, from which as an ultimate centre He 
can destroy the old order of things and construct the new. 

What and where is this natural plane of the human mind ? 

In general terms the universe is divided into two parts, 
spiritual and natural. The natural includes the material uni- 
verse, and the lowest or natural plane of the mind into which 
man is born. The spiritual includes the spiritual universe, 
and the three degrees, rational, spiritual, and celestial, into 
which man rises after death, or which were opened in him by 
a good life in the world. 

These are again divided into internal and external. In 
general terms the spiritual is internal and the natural is ex- 
ternal 5 but every man, every degree, every heaven, has its 
internal and its external forms, and the external of the higher 
degree is connected with the internal of the degree below it. 
And again : every form — every man, angel, society, heaven, 
has three degrees of altitude (successive or discrete degrees), 
and three degrees of latitude (simultaneous or continuous 
degrees), all represented by the terms, celestial, spiritual, 
and natural. 

Although the Lord has two kingdoms pervading all the 
heavens, called the celestial and spiritual kingdoms, still the 
third and second heavens are pre-eminently celestial and spirit- 
ual ; and the quality of the inhabitants of the first or ultimate 
heaven is rational or interior-natural, or as Swedenborg says, 
celestial-natural and spiritual-natural. 

Now all below the three degrees of the heavens and all be- 
low the internal man, is the natural plane of the human mind. 
This plane is common to us living men, to the inhabitants of 



INTO THE NATURAL PLANE OF THE MIND. 36 1 

the world of spirits, and to the hells. It contains within its 
outer circle, strictly natural, two inner circles constituting its 
celestial and spiritual degrees in simultaneous order. These 
inner degrees are closed to evil spirits and to unregenerate 
men. The hells, therefore, can only flow into the outermost 
degree of the natural mind. 

That outermost degree of the natural plane of the mind 
constituting the natural man, has also its three degrees, rational, 
scientific, and sensual ; and each of these degrees has its in- 
ternal and external. The highest, the internal of the rational, 
connects us with the heavens ; whilst the lowest, the external- 
sensual, immerses us entirely in nature, and we share it with 
the beasts. 

We are in the world of nature only as to our animal life, or 
exteriorly ; we are in the world of spirits as to our human life, 
or interiorly ; and so far as we are evil we are in hell. We 
are not in heaven, or heaven is not forming in us, until the 
rational is opened in us, and so connects us with the spiritual 
and the celestial. When the " extraordinary and active pres- 
ence of the Lord ' ' is felt in the natural plane of human life, 
He will have passed or descended through the heavens, and 
have come into nearer contact with devils, spirits, and men. 
What tremendous issues may we expect from such a coming 
in the ultimate sphere of his creation ! 

Hell is entirely outside of the Grand Man. Its three de- 
grees of evil are antipodal to the three degrees in the heavens, 
and no influx passes directly into the hells from the opposite 
heavens. The Lord flowing through the heavens only meets 
with the hells in the natural plane of the human mind ; and 
then only in its outermost or strictly natural sphere, for the 
celestial and spiritual of simultaneous order are closed in the 
devils. The hells are hells because there are no planes formed 
in the celestial, spiritual, rational, and interior-natural degrees 
of its inhabitants for the arrest of the Divine influx, but it 
31 



362 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

passes through into the sensual sphere, and is there turned into 
evils, fantasies, and abominations. 

Jehovah came into contact with the hells by assuming the 
maternal heredity in the plane of the natural mind. He put 
off everything derived from the mother, because He subdued 
all the hells which flowed into the proprium of his infirm hu- 
manity which then ceased to exist ; and He stood in his own 
proprium, which is life itself, the Divine Man from inmost to 
outmost. When we abstain from evils we desist from our own 
wills, so that the proprium is subdued, and we receive from 
the Lord that new proprium which is his flesh and blood. 
The new proprium grows in us as the natural plane of the mind 
becomes reduced into more and more perfect correspondence 
with the rational degree above it ; for so the Father is united 
to the Son in us, the hells are cast out, the heavens inflow, 
and the life of the branch in the vine is established in our 
souls. This will be the perfect and permanent state of the 
men of the New Church. 

The world of spirits, like the hells, is no necessary part of 
the organic framework of the universe. Its existence depends 
upon our transition from external states in which our interiors 
are concealed, to internal states in which they are unfolded. 
If we were not in mixed states of good and evil, but if the 
natural plane corresponded perfectly to the spiritual, we would 
pass at once after death into our special heaven, just as infants 
do at present. The interiors of the natural mind are implanted 
in the world of spirits ; and there are two worlds to us only 
because our interiors and our exteriors do not correspond to 
each other, or to the threefold expanses of the heavens within 
us. 

Nature is the ultimate plane in which divine, celestial, and 
spiritual things are terminated. All the interiors close in to- 
gether and rest upon the exterior and extremes, thus upon the 
sensual or ultimate of man's life \ and this is illustrated by the 



INTO THE NATURAL PLANE OF THE MIND. 363 

skin, which contains all the interiors of the body and holds 
them in connection. The natural plane of the human mind 
is the gateway or medium for the descent of the Lord into the 
ultimates of nature. It is, indeed, the centre from which the 
natural world is created, and the states and phenomena of the 
natural world exactly correspond to its operations. The fixity 
of the natural world is due to the fixity of the natural plane 
of the human mind. 

These grand fundamentals of the New Church philosophy, 
worthy of the profoundest study, explain the facts of the In- 
carnation and its so-called miraculous phenomena. When 
the Lord Jesus Christ assumed the natural plane of the human 
mind in a finite body, He occupied the central point from 
which the external universe is constantly being created. He 
could, therefore, by the influent life of the Father, still the 
waves and the winds, turn water into wine, materialize bread 
and fishes apparently from nothing, and dissipate instanta- 
neously the organic elements of disease in the human body ; 
and all these things done according to the supreme laws of 
order, appeared to the uninitiated the most extraordinary 
violations of those laws. 

When He comes again and enters the general body of Hu- 
manity, He will occupy standpoints in the natural plane of 
every man who receives Him, similar to those which He oc- 
cupied in his own material form in Judea. When He has 
gathered together his elect, and arranged and structured them 
into the form and order of the heavens, the divine influxes 
passing through the unobstructed natural plane of the human 
mind, will reconstruct the physical universe according to the 
laws of spiritual regeneration. The very elemental substances 
and forces of nature will be modified. The causes of storms, 
accidents, diseases, and all disorderly phenomena will be 
eliminated. The ferocities of the animal kingdom will dis- 
appear : the lion will truly lie down with the lamb ; the ser- 



364 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMATES. 

pent will cease to be poisonous ; and our own bodies, per- 
fectly chastened and purified, will become temples of the liv- 
ing God. "Greater works than these shall he do, because 1 
go to my Father" O, the power and glory of the actual and 
organic descent of the Divine Humanity ! 

All these things can only be effected by the subjugation of 
the human proprium, the birth and growth of the new pro- 
prium from the Lord, and the elimination of the hells from 
the natural plane of the human mind. This involves a pro- 
longation of the Judgment begun in 1757, which is effected 
by the continuous descent of the Lord, with an "extraordi- 
nary and active presence/ ' down through the world of spirits 
into those ultimates of the natural mind, which really consti- 
tute the world of nature. 

This judgment is now going on in the world of spirits with 
ever-increasing rapidity. It is entering the interiors of the 
natural man, and they will be progressively laid open, so that 
the interior man will be compelled to utter himself externally, 
regardless of all restraints or bonds, social or legal. The 
processes of putting off our external states and appearing in 
our real characters, will take place before death just as they 
now do after it. The atmospheres of the Divine Humanity, 
penetrating the interiors of every human being, will bring 
into judgment, not only the individual, but through asso- 
ciated individuals, the churches which are the imaginary 
heavens of the natural plane, and all the social, civil, and 
institutional life of the race. 

The celestial and spiritual forces evolving from within, will 
work their way downward and outward, creating external 
forms in correspondence with themselves ; and during this 
stupendous process, all opposing things will gradually give 
way. Churches will disintegrate and dissolve ; governments 
will be revolutionized and reconstructed ; and the competi- 
tive elements of human life utterly broken down, and society 



INTO THE NATURAL PLANE OF THE MIND, 365 

rearranged upon permanently cooperative principles. Thus 
our hells of individualism will perish, and the divine social- 
ism of the heavens be inaugurated upon the earth. 

The series of stupendous phenomena of judgment, happen- 
ing and about to happen, is unfolded in the book of Revela- 
tion from the 15th chapter to the end, in that " spiritual- 
natural sense M of the Word mentioned in A. E. 630. It 
may be given by " illustration" to those who are in the gen- 
uine love of truth for its own sake, and who preserve in 
thought the distinction between the internal and the external 
man. (A. C. 5822.) 

Now is the time (or the required state of the external 
church and the world), when the seven angels having the 
seven iast plagues are coming forth out of the temple of the 
tabernacle; which Swedenborg says " signifies a preparation 
from the Lord to operate by influx from the inmost heaven 
into the church, that its evils and falsities may be universally 
disclosed, and that thus the wicked may be separated from 
the good." (A. R. 670.) 

The plagues that follow, which are now appearing and will 
indefinitely increase, are the results in ultimates of evil de- 
vastated, separated from good and left to itself, so that by 
the eternal laws of order, it runs into punishment and de- 
struction. The judgment upon Babylon is the judgment upon 
the universal evil state of the human will ; the judgment upon 
the beast and the false prophet is the judgment upon the 
universally false state of the human understanding, preceded 
by revelations of spiritual light from the Word, indicated by 
the opened heavens, and the appearance of the White Horse 
followed by the armies of heaven upon white horses. 

All these things are necessary, organic preparations, pro- 
ceeding from above downward, from centres toward circum- 
ferences; and they ultimate in the binding of Satan with 
chains in the bottomless pit. This is the final and perfect 
31* 



366 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

subjugation of the proprium of the individual soul, so that 
Christ reigns supreme in the life for a thousand years, or to 
the fullest and extreme extent. Then the spiritual triumphs 
permanently over the natural. 

But the work of the Christian is not done. He is the me- 
dium of bringing all lower things into judgment. When 
"the thousand years " are finished, that is, when the celestial 
and spiritual states of the church are full enough for the pur- 
pose, the divine influx is directed upon "the rest of the 
dead." Satan released from prison and besieging the camp 
of the saints, is the proprium of the hells infesting and as- 
saulting the religious life. But as this life is now centered in 
the divine love, spiritual fire from heaven scatters and de- 
stroys its enemies. Then follow the grand ultimate Scenes 
of the spiritual resurrection and the final acts of spiritual 
judgment or separation in the extremes of the natural plane 
of human life. The Lord has then passed from primates to 
ultimates, and the new heaven and the new earth are ren- 
dered possible, and therefore appear upon the stage. Until 
that state has been reached, all church organizations are 
merely man-made and originating in proprium — externals 
without corresponding internals. 

The hells will not be regenerated as the universalists think, 
nor will they be annihilated as some believe. They will be 
subdued and reformed ; and instead of being infesting ene- 
mies, they will become tributaries, dependents, and servants 
of the human race, or friends and allies, according to their 
own external and internal states. (A. C. 1695.) The regen- 
erate men of the new earth will constitute the exterior of the 
ultimate heaven, and no influx into the human mind from 
the hells will any more be possible. 

The Lord, however, will make merciful provision for those 
in hell, as He does for all his creatures. The general pro- 
prium of hell will be subdued, although its inhabitants will 



INTO THE NATURAL PLANE OF THE MIND. 367 

be receptive of only a low, sensual, and scientific life. They 
will be wisely governed and controlled from their own selfish 
standpoints. They will be in rapport with the subjugated 
proprium of the heavens. They will render willing obedi- 
ence, for they will discover the Lord to be their best friend, 
who saves them with a powerful hand from themselves and 
from each other. They will exclaim, " The empire is peace.' ' 

The effect of the descent of the Lord into the ultimate 
plane of the regenerating mind will be, to separate the good 
and truth in the man from the evil and the false in him, in 
such a manner that he will perceive the presence of the Lord 
in him with a new consciousness. He will feel and realize 
his two propriums — the old proprium which is conjoined to 
hell, and the new proprium which is the Lord in him, an ab- 
solutely new life, organized, as it were, from the flesh and 
blood of the Divine Humanity, and given to him to enjoy as 
if it were his own. He will clearly perceive that everything 
good and true in him is the Lord's and not his, and that 
everything evil and false in him flows in from hell, and is not 
his own, except so far as he accepts it and approves it. He 
will clearly understand the words of one who has long borne 
the Lord consciously in his bosom — "Outside of the atmo- 
spheres of the Lord, I am Satan ; within the atmospheres of 
the Lord, I am the Lord." 

In proportion as the old proprium passes off to the circum- 
ferences or to the feet, and becomes the mere basis or pedes- 
tal upon which the man stands, and not the man himself, the 
Lord takes possession and abides in the soul. This is the 
new life, which will be considered in the next essay. It will 
bring with it, after indescribable tribulations and combats, 
internal respirations, celestial perceptions, the heavenly mar- 
riage, angelic communications, and the sense of power and 
the perpetual peace of the life of heaven. Then and then 
only will the divine petition of the Lord's prayer be realized, 



368 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMATES. 

that the Father's will maybe done on earth even as it is done 
in heaven. 

Now, my dear reader, I am only offering you in these essays 
a bare outline of general principles, a mere statement of uni- 
versal which it would take volumes to infill and vivify with 
particulars, with the necessary facts, illustrations, and argu- 
ments. That work will be done by other hands than mine. 
At present I invite you to survey with me a few of the in- 
cidents and signs of our modern times, which show what 
progress the race is making toward a realization of the tre- 
mendous issues I have suggested. 

It was shown in the last Essay from the spiritual sense of 
the 14th chapter of Revelation, that the Lord descended 
through the celestial and spiritual into the natural or ultimate 
heaven, for judgment and the creation of a new order of 
things. How also the revelations in Africa and elsewhere, 
the spiritual illumination of Swedenborg, and the judgment 
executed upon the church in 1757, were connected with and 
caused by the superior and interior events. The effect or 
consequence has been the continuous opening of the three 
degrees of man's life, which exist in simultaneous order 
within the natural plane of his being. 

The first appearance or movement of the descending Lord 
into the natural plane — adventus Domini, and also initiamen- 
tum Novce Ecclesicz — was made in its inmost degree by a 
revelation of the doctrines of life, what Swedenborg calls 
"the celestial doctrine/ ' to certain people in Africa who 
were "opened" to receive dictations from angels and good 
spirits, and to many persons of the celestial type of char- 
acter in Europe. 

This secret and concealed vivification of celestial remains, 
like a stone dropped into the centre of a pool of water, pul- 
sated and radiated from its unseen sources throughout the 
entire affectional or emotional sphere of the human race. 



INTO THE NATURAL PLANE OF THE MIND, 369 

It was a spark of heavenly fire, appearing everywhere, and 
tending to kindle into gentle affections and brotherly love 
every kindred germ of celestial remains, which could be 
found anywhere in the human heart. We may fairly presume 
that one of its first effects was to vivify the dormant religious 
nature of Swedenborg himself; for we find the cold, mathe- 
matical scientist and philosopher, over fifty years of age, 
suddenly entering upon strange religious experiences, and 
writhing under conviction of sin and contrition of heart 
like the mourners at a Methodist altar. 

Indeed the great Methodist movement was one of the first 
fruits of the dawning of a celestial life upon the race ; and 
if that remarkable people had possessed a true system of 
doctrine to correct, explain, systematize, and shape their 
experiences, the effect upon the world would have been 
tremendous. But it v/as heat without light ; whereas our 
Swedenborgian movement has been characterized by light 
without heat. The religion of the future will be the married 
union of the two. 

Emotional Methodism, however, was but an exaggerated 
expression of the general revival of religious affections which 
has been going on ever since throughout the world, from the 
same undiscovered cause, the influent heaven of the celestial 
degree. From this inmost fountain which lies in every human 
heart, have sprung forth all the great humanitarian, missionary, 
socialistic, and co-operative movements of the Age, all the 
generous and liberalizing outbursts of the human feeling of 
sympathy, and the far-reaching cry of " Liberty, Equality, 
and Fraternity.' ' 

The interior-celestial is concealed and conceals itself from 
the world. The greatest uses are performed by those whom 
we know least, and of whom we hear nothing. Since the 
opening in Africa there have, no doubt, been many openings, 
many communications, secret and unannounced. There are 

Y 



370 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

people at present throughout the world, who breathe in and 
from the heavens, and feel consciously the presence of God, 
who assume nothing and reveal nothing, but like Mary 
brooding over the signs of the Christ, ponder these things 
secretly in their hearts. 

In the bosom of the external New Church, more than sixty 
years ago, the angels were permitted to reveal themselves to 
an exceedingly poor mechanic in England, James Johnston 
by name. They did not come in apocalyptic splendors, but 
descended into the interior-sensual of the natural degree, and 
accommodated themselves in dress, manners, names, and 
conversation, to the opinions, ignorance, and prejudices of 
the old man's mind. They lifted him, however, out of the 
atmosphere of the little ecclesiasticisms which surrounded 
him, and taught him by suitable representatives that the 
heavens and the earth are conjoined together, and the church 
established in the heart of man, by the simple duties and 
charities of life. It was, perhaps, more than a mere teaching. 
It may have had organic values not yet revealed to us. 

We are indebted to the liberality of Mr. A. W. Manning, 
of San Francisco, for the publication of this remarkable Diary 
of James Johnston. The extreme simplicity of the state- 
ments and the apparent insignificance of the things revealed, 
might induce us to ignore it as a matter of little worth ; but 
the opening among the Africans stands in our way as a warn- 
ing, and we dare not assert that this mission of the poor, old, 
honest, truthful mechanic, " the celestial representative ' ' as 
his angels called him, was not somehow or other a mission 
of concealed but real importance, in the inmost conjunction 
of the heavens and the earth in the simple life of charity and 
duty. 

Every student of Swedenborg knows that spiritual phe- 
nomena vary immensely according to what degree of the 
mind is opened, and according to the conditions and cir- 



INTO THE NATURAL PLANE OF THE MIND. 37 1 

cumstances of the opening. In James Johnston's case there 
was clearly no opening of any of the discrete degrees leading 
into the heavens, but such an opening of the interior-sensual 
leading only into the world of spirits, that spirits representing 
angels could flow in and apparently project themselves into 
the world of nature. Abraham's vision and entertainment of 
the three men (Gen. xviii.) were analogous phenomena, ex- 
plicable by the same laws. Swedenborg says that Abraham's 
washing their feet, was in order that the Divine should ap- 
proach nearer to the human " by putting on somewhat natu- 
ral," and that he offered them food so that the human and 
the celestial should be brought nearer together. These and 
similar things in the Word will throw great light on John- 
ston's, and other cases, now discredited only because they are 
not comprehended. 

It is highly probable that the revelations to Johnston con- 
stituted an exterior movement corresponding to the interior 
movement among the people in Africa. The latter was an 
opening of the celestial-rational, the former of the celestial- 
natural. The celestial Church which is the New Church, is 
thus ultimated or established upon earth, with the conscious 
concurrent influx of the angelic heavens. It was absolutely 
necessary, however, that this initiation of the life of the New 
Church should take place secretly, among obscure people and 
in obscure places, so that it might be utterly concealed from 
the church and the world. 

The woman seen in heaven represents the celestial affec- 
tions of the New Church about to be established. The man- 
child born of her represents the doctrine of spiritual truth — 
more especially the doctrine of charity or the good of life — 
as revealed through Swedenborg. The woman flying into 
the wilderness where she is secretly nourished, and the child 
being caught up to God, signify the Divine circumspection 
and protection extending to the infant New Church in its 



$?2 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

feeble beginnings, manifested by concealing it from its ene- 
mies. Even to this day, the highest, holiest, most powerful 
elements and forces of the New-Church life upon earth, are 
undiscovered and undiscoverable. 

Swedenborg says that if the order of man's life had not 
been inverted, celestial affections flowing into the middle de- 
gree of his mind, would produce corresponding states of spir- 
itual intelligence, and he would need no man to tell him of 
the Lord or the mysteries of his kingdom. If the order of 
man's life had not been inverted, there would have been no 
need of Swedenborg or any unfolding of the spiritual sense 
of the Word, for the celestial affections vivified in Africa, 
would have gradually brought the race, by the power of in- 
flux and correspondence, into the perception of spiritual 
truth. It is, indeed, because the original order of man's life 
is being gradually restored by regeneration and the continuous 
opening of degrees, that approximations to the doctrines of 
the New Church are being gradually made throughout the 
Christian world, without any knowledge of Swedenborg or 
his expositors. 

One of "the most extraordinary instances of this was the 
case of Edward Irving, the great Presbyterian orator of Lon- 
don. This man, from states of childlike simplicity, fervent 
piety, intense love of use and self-abnegation, was brought 
by interior ways to see in a great measure the doctrine of the 
Divine Humanity and the true nature of the Atonement, 
whilst his preaching was followed by remarkable spiritual 
manifestations among his people. He died of a crushed 
spirit and broken heart, without disease, a martyr to the new 
faith which had literally come down into him from heaven. 
He was arraigned by his church for abominable heresies, 
tried, convicted, and expelled. A perverted ecclesiasticism 
is always in the hells of the crucifixion ; and he who brings it 
a new truth, out of correspondence with its states of affection, 



INTO THE NATURAL PLANE OF THE MIND. 373 

hears the old cry, "Away with him, away with him ! Crucify 
him, crucify him ! M 

Since man is not in the true order of his life, and his evil 
affections can only flood his mind with falsities, the Lord has 
mercifully provided that his understanding may be elevated 
into the light of heaven by means of truths revealed from 
heaven. As he cannot receive through his own affectional 
sphere the truth that flows from good, the Lord reveals to him 
the truth that leads to good. The Lord therefore comes into 
the clouds of heaven, revealing the spiritual truths of his Word 
for the future establishment of a celestial church. Truths and 
goods of the same degree are not married, but those of one 
degree are married to those of the degree above it. (A. C. 
3952.) The natural or literal truths of the Word attracted 
spiritual goods from the degree above it, and their marriage 
made the spiritual life of the Apostolic Church. The spirit- 
ual truths now revealed through Swedenborg, must attract 
and be married to celestial goods, so that the New Church 
which will be the last, will be a celestial church correspond- 
ing to the Most Ancient Church which was the first. Swe- 
denborg answers the cry of the celestial for light. 

But the New Church cannot be established in the world, 
celestial .goods cannot descend through spiritual truths into 
ultimates, until the natural plane of the human mind is pre- 
pared for their reception. This plane has been the seat of 
the most wonderful organic preparation for nearly one hun- 
dred and fifty years. The divine influxes flowing through 
the celestial into the rational, and through the spiritual into 
the natural — the Last Judgment having cleared the way for 
their passage — have produced all the rapid and extraordinary 
changes, religious, civil, social, rationalistic, scientific, and 
material, of our modern times. It is the Lord descending 
as the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom into the interior 
degrees of the human mind in the world of spirits, who has 
32 



3/4 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

caused all the agitations, the doubts, the fears, the aspirations, 
the ecstacies, the revolutions, the progressions, personal and 
social, individual and general, of the whole race. He thus 
enters the general body of humanity at his Second Coming. 
He moves from centres to circumferences. He now approaches 
the surface. 

Our life is threefold : the inmost sphere of it is the life of 
affection, the middle sphere is the life of thought, the ulti- 
mate or external sphere is the life of sensations and motions 
in which the affections and thoughts embody and express them- 
selves in actions. This is true of every man, spirit, and angel. 
Every one also has interior affections and exterior affections, 
interior thoughts and exterior thoughts, interior sensories or 
sensuals as Swedenborg calls them, and exterior sensuals. 
Our exterior sensuals are the affections and thoughts ultimated 
solely in the life of the senses of the body. Our interior sen- 
suals open into the world of spirits, and are illustrated abun- 
dantly in the phenomena of dreams, mesmerism, clairvoyance, 
transference of sensation, and the astonishing developments 
of modern spiritualism. 

The Lord flows " with an extraordinary, active presence/ ' 
as Swedenborg calls it, into our inmost life, the sphere of 
affection, when we get into states of profound conviction of 
sin, contrition, and humiliation, and our souls are stirred with 
all the passional elements of love, hope, fear, aspiration, self- 
contempt, self-renunciation, and despair. Ever since the open- 
ing of the celestial degree, there has been a constant influx 
from that sphere tending to bring all men into these emotional 
states. This is the secret of the Methodist conversion, one 
of the most extraordinary spiritual phenomena of all the ages. 
There have been millions of intelligent witnesses to its facts. 

When a man, profoundly humbled with a sense of his ine- 
radicable sinfulness, resolutely determines to leave the world, 
the flesh, and the devil, and falls in strong faith and absolute 



INTO THE NATURAL PLANE OF THE MIND. 375 

self-surrender at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ, the " celes- 
tial remains " concealed within him are touched and vivified 
— a thing which, since the opening of the celestial degree in 
Africa, impossible to multitudes, and even to the whole world 
at once. According to interior states and organizations the 
penitents have the celestial degree measurably opened in them, 
and, when wholly abstracted from sensuals, they come into 
perceptive and sensational contact with the states of their 
attendant angels. Sooner or later, gradually or suddenly dur- 
ing the excitement, a great light breaks in upon them, an un- 
utterable peace, an indescribable joy, a sense of holiness and 
freedom from sin, a love toward the Lord Jesus Christ which 
beggars all description. The soul is flooded with the light of 
heaven. 

The Methodist explanation of this wonderful but transitory 
state, is altogether erroneous. There is here no justification 
by faith, no forgiveness of sin, no regeneration or redemption 
whatever. The biological and materialistic hypotheses are 
equally untenable. The truth is simply this : the man by cer- 
tain genuine and indispensable spiritual exercises, has come 
into states of mind receptive of celestial influx; and as the 
Lord is now opening all the interior degrees of life wher- 
ever the conditions presented render it possible, the celestial 
degree opens in him, the angels inflow, and communicate to 
him their own states of blessedness and delight. 

"The perception and sensation of delight and blessedness 
thence resulting," says Swedenborg, "surpass all description. 
. . . When good spirits, who are not yet in that delight be- 
cause not yet taken up into heaven, perceive it from an angel 
by the sphere of his love, they are filled with such delight 
that they come as it were into a delicious trance." — H. H. 
409. 

The Methodist conversion is, therefore, the temporary 
transference or induction of the angelic state upon the hu- 



37^ THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

man mind, and not its own condition. Such condition is 
only created and fixed, as it is in the angels, by the long and 
arduous work of regeneration. So the convert soon finds the 
heavens have closed, the vision has fled, and Satan who had 
departed for a season, returns to tempt and torture him 
again. Only those who have sufficient depth of earth and 
look constantly to the sun, bring forth the fruits of a good 
life. 

Now, why cannot this beautiful gleam of heaven be perma- 
nent ? Because celestial goods with their corresponding de- 
lights must have a basis of spiritual truths into which they 
may flow. The plane for the reception of these spiritual 
truths, can only be formed by the knowledges derived from 
the revelations made through Swedenborg. Nor even then, 
with the celestial and spiritual degrees opened in us, could 
we realize the peace and joy of the heavenly life in ultimates, 
until the Lord had descended into the natural plane of the 
human mind and opened it to the influx of the heavens. 
That great work is now going on ; and as it progresses, re- 
generating men will feel the joy and peace of the angels 
descending through their spirits and pervading even the 
sensories of the material body. 

As the work of judgment proceeds in the world of spirits 
(of which we are all inhabitants), the presence of the Lord 
will become more and more distinctly perceived in the hearts 
of those whose evils are being cast out and whose proprium 
is being thoroughly subdued. There will be such openings 
of the interior sensuals, that our Lord, entering into the nat- 
ural plane of the mind, may be projected objectively out of 
the man by the laws of spiritual creation, and seen either as 
the Divine Man Himself, or as an angel infilled with his 
presence (H. H. 121), or as a whole society of angels under 
one human form (A. C. 10,810/11). There are men now 
living who have thus seen Him, although their declarations, 



INTO THE NATURAL PLANE OF THE MIND. S77 

like those of the women respecting the appearance of Jesus 
after his burial, will be regarded "as idle tales" — relations 
not to be credited. 

The spiritual history of man since the time of Swedenborg 
and the early Methodists and the early Newchurchmen down 
to the present hour, is full of extraordinary and constantly 
increasing phenomena, irreconcilable with the old theologies 
and philosophies, explicable only by the genuine truths of 
the New Church, and which all tend to prove that the world 
of spirits is being gradually opened to the interior perceptive 
faculties of the human race. Many of these remarkable phe- 
nomena have occurred among the receivers of the heavenly 
doctrines, few as they still are in number. Some are only 
whispered from friend to friend : some no doubt are uncon- 
fessed and unrecorded. This is only the beginning. After 
a while they will come in torrents — by thousands. Nor can 
they be concealed or repressed ; but the interiors will shine 
down and out through the externals, and stand confessed be- 
fore the world. 

And here the inexorable logic of that spiritual truth which 
reasons from centres to circumferences, from internals to ex- 
ternals and not the reverse, points out the true significance 
and value of the wide-spread and wider-spreading events of 
modern Spiritualism. They are proofs, and at the same time 
consequences, of the opening of the interior-sensual degree 
of the natural mind, so that the world of spirits and the 
world of nature are coming together. As the natural plane is 
opened, the heavens and the hells both rush in ; and the com- 
bats of the world of spirits will be apparently led down into 
the world of men. 

Why are the phenomena of Spiritualism productive of so 

many unmistakable evils and falsities, whilst the good of it is 

yet so unapparent ? The heavens cannot descend into the 

present activities of the natural life of man, because they 

32* 



37^ THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMATES. 

spring from and are saturated with his evil proprium. The 
hells, however, flow in first, take possession at once, and 
vivify all the energies of man from the selfhood. They find 
the ground already prepared for them, and their own ener- 
gies coincide with the selfish and sensual rush of human mo- 
tives and appetites. But the heavens are equally immanent 
and active. They work more interiorly, nor can they fall 
into the currents of human thought and feeling except so far 
as the proprium is subdued. Therefore they come to de- 
stroy before they can rebuild ; they come to lay waste and to 
bring low, for thus only can they prepare the way of the 
Lord. 

Swedenborg, from the spiritual standpoints of the last cen- 
tury, asserted that communication with spirits was disorderly 
and dangerous. His disciples have therefore very generally 
avoided and ignored the developments of Spiritism, classing 
them with the old arts of magic and necromancy which are 
forbidden in the Word. The phenomena, however, are en- 
tirely different. The latter arose in the corrupt ancient 
Church from the abuse of correspondences, which were then 
in power. It was an effort to force one's way into the world 
of spirits, and to ally one's self with the evil powers of that 
world for selfish purposes. Modern Spiritism is a spontane- 
ous, unsought, unheralded descent or opening from above. 
It is the world of spirits rapping at our natural doors, appeal- 
ing to us for recognition and intercourse — first by hearing, 
then by sight and touch. It is a new development, unfore- 
seen by Swedenborg, fraught of course with disorder and 
danger, for it will bring us into audible, visible, and sensa- 
tional contact with evil spirits. But by the same law it will 
bring us after a while into audible, visible, and sensational 
contact with angels : and at the worst, it cannot unfold to us 
any hell but that which already exists in our own bosoms. 

Although Swedenborg says that in his own day it was dis- 



INTO THE NATURAL PLANE OF THE MIND. 379 

orderly and dangerous to hold communication with angels 
and spirits, he often qualifies his statements by adding, unless 
a man be in the true faith, or in the acknowledgment of the 
Divine Humanity, etc. He also declares that if man was in 
the true order of his life, it would not be disorderly or dan- 
gerous, but perfectly natural and proper, to hold communica- 
tion with the heavens. 

In the great openings which are preparing for the world, 
the well-instructed student of Swedenborg will be the last 
man to be deceived by fantasies, or carried away by false 
Christs. He holds in his hand the true means of testing all 
phenomena. He will care nothing for communication with 
spirits and angels. He will stick closely to the ultimate du- 
ties of life, knowing that the Lord comes first and the angels 
afterwards. He will shun all evil things as sins against God, 
and look to the Lord alone for life, wisdom, and power; and 
he will then accept gladly such communications with the 
other life as the Lord may give him, for the purpose of aiding 
and perfecting his uses in this life. This was precisely the 
case with Swedenborg ; for in all that he saw and heard, in 
all his communications with the spiritual world, he was so 
directed and guided by the Lord in every event, every 
change of state, every conversation, that he could truly say 
that he received nothing from angels or spirits, but every 
thing through angels and spirits from the Lord alone. 

One sure sign of the impending judgment in ultimates, is 
the growing lawlessness of the world, the increasing contempt 
for authority, the breaking of old bonds, external and inter- 
nal. It is the beginning of the end. It is the process by 
which exterior restraints are laid aside, and the true inte- 
rior comes forth to sight. The conservatives will labor to 
strengthen or re-impose the old fetters both in church and 
state; but in vain. They are all doomed. The evil will 
despise them more and more. The good will require them 



38O THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

less and less. The internal will cleave down through the 
external, and reveal itself and assert itself regardless of all 
bonds. The eyes of the future will see strange sights. 
Tribulations unheard of before, earthquakes in church and 
state, dissolutions and reconstructions; precipitations like 
Lucifer's, resurrections like Lazarus', the renewal of magic, 
the repetition of miracle, the unfolding of all secrets, the 
hyena in the pulpit, the dove in the brothel. "The last 
shall be first, and the first last." 

These are not prophecies, dear reader, but legitimate de- 
ductions from the teachings of the Word, and from the 
general laws and principles laid down by Swedenborg. 

As the interiors are opened, the results will be determined 
by the organic states and receptivities of the medium. There 
will be innumerable cases of false utterance, of premature 
philosophizing, of abortive efforts, movements of the pro- 
prium to maintain its status or increase its power. Amid the 
chaos of opinions and sentiments which will ensue, the Word 
of God and its spiritual interpretation as revealed through 
Swedenborg, will be our sure refuge and rock of defense. 
Whoever clings to the atmospheres, of the Word in which 
the angels breathe, will be saved from the infestations of evil 
spirits and be guided to the light. 

It is probable that many beautiful and wonderful sayings 
of the Divine Man, unrecorded by the Evangelists, floated 
about in traditionary forms among the early Christians for a 
long time. One of the most extraordinary of these is the 
following found in the second Epistle of Clement, chap. 
10, v. 2. 

''For the Lord Himself , being asked by one when his King- 
dom would come, replied : ' When two shall be one, and that 
which is without as that which is within, and the male with 
the female, neither male nor female. ' ' ' 

This abstruse answer, concealing its meaning from those 



INTO THE NATURAL PLANE OF THE MIND. 38 1 

who could not see, is now intelligible. "That which is 
without' ' shall be "as that which is within," when the 
internal is opened and flows down into the external, com- 
pelling it and transforming it into correspondence with its 
own structure and order. "Two shall be one," when the 
male shall be with the female and the female with the male 
in such a manner, that neither is male or female alone, but 
the two souls are so united that "each feels himself or her- 
self in the other mutually and interchangeably," as Sweden- 
borg expresses it. (C. L. 178.) This mystery of the heavens 
is going to be realized on earth, for it is the outbirth of the 
heavenly marriage of goodness and truth. The interiors and 
exteriors are to be made one; and so, through the conjugial 
love which is the life of the New Church, and the opened 
heavens, the Lord will descend into ultimates and establish 
his everlasting kingdom upon the earth. 

The transcendent meaning and use, the previded and pro- 
vided end of all these phenomena, is the inauguration of the 
New Life, the life of the branch in the Vine in this world 
of ours, whose inhabitants correspond to the sensuo-corporeal 
principles of the Grand Man. Then will the spiritual uni- 
verse be held together from primaries to ultimates, from centres 
to circumferences, in the loving embrace of the Divine Man. 
Light upon this sacred subject, drawn from Swedenborg and 
the Word, will be presented in the next essay. 



ESSAY IV. 

THE LORD'S KINGDOM ON EARTH.— THE NEW LIFE. 

WHAT is the New Life which the entrance of the Lord 
into the Body of Humanity will inaugurate? 

It is the Kingdom of Heaven, which is said to be 
within us. It is the answer to the petition of the Lord's 
prayer : 

"Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is 
in heaven" 

It is the fulfillment of prophecy : 

" Now is come salvation and strength, and the kingdom of 
our God, and the power of his Christ." 

It is the realization of the promise of the Master : 

"And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath 
appointed unto me. ' ' 

The Church of the Future will be a celestial church ; but 
it will constitute the heart and lungs of the world, and not 
the whole man. The Christian life of the future will not 
be a celestial life alone, converting the world into a third 
heaven ; nor a spiritual life alone, confounding it with the 
second heaven ; nor a regenerate natural life alone, making 
it one with the first heaven. In a world which corresponds 
to the sensuo-corporeal principles of the Grand Man, upon 
which the Lord was Himself ultimated even as to flesh and 
bones, there can be no celestial church, without spiritual 
intermediates, and natural and even sensuo-corporeal foun- 
dations. 

The natural plane of human life is the ultimate, basis, and 

382 



THE LORD'S KINGDOM ON EARTH. 383 

containant of all the interior discrete degrees which flow into 
it and spread themselves out upon it, in correspondential 
forms in simultaneous order. It is like the human skin, into 
which the nerves and blood-vessels and cellular tissues of the 
body descend, and arrange themselves in stupendous order, 
constituting a broad, vital membrane which contains, repre- 
sents, and repeats the whole man. Such will be the Lord's 
kingdom in ultimates. It will be a miniature form of all the 
conjoined heavens, an image of the Grand Man. 

It is because the Lord descends into the Body of Humanity 
from and through the heavens, that the natural plane of the 
human mind will be hereafter infilled and structured accord- 
ing to the form and order of the heavens. There will be 
members of the Church universal on earth composed spirit- 
ually of all the churches, who will correspond to every de- 
gree of the heavens, to the interiors and exteriors of every 
degree, and to all the intermediate forms which connect and 
bind the parts of the Lord's celestial and spiritual kingdoms 
into a transcendent whole. 

In the spiritual world, times, spaces, distances, and phe- 
nomena are determined by the spiritual states and changes of 
state in the inhabitants. Therefore the celestial, spiritual, 
and natural degrees, and the interiors and exteriors of those 
degrees are separated from each other. And even in every 
society the spirits of the most interior nature occupy the 
mountains; those of a less interior nature live upon the hills; 
while those of the least interior nature dwell in the valleys. 
Or if the society occupies a plain, the most interior are 
grouped in the centre, the less interior are arranged around 
them, and the least interior are located in the circumferences. 
So also the relative position and arrangements of good spirits 
and angels as to east and west, north and south, are deter- 
mined by their states of love and wisdom, and their recep- 
tivity of the Divine Sun. 



384 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

In the world of nature, however, which is a fixed plane for 
the insemination, birth, growth, and translation of human 
beings to higher spheres, no such grouping or arrangements 
will ever be possible. Men will continue to organize them- 
selves into families, tribes, nations, churches, societies, asso- 
ciations, unions, etc. — occupying external relations as here- 
tofore ; but the interior forms of these larger bodies will ap- 
proach nearer and nearer to the use and perfection of the 
human form, as through individual regeneration they are led 
more and more into the life and order of the heavens. 

Every church for instance, every congregation or society, 
will be composed of celestial, spiritual, and natural men ; of 
interior and exterior celestial men, interior and exterior spir- 
itual men, interior and exterior natural men, and of all the 
intermediates between them ; so that it will be a little form 
or image of the heavens, its component parts differing im- 
mensely as to opinions, but held together as one whole in 
the bonds of charity. The Lord will flow into it as He 
does into the heavens, assign each his place and functions, 
and vivify the whole by his presence. Whatever may be the 
external appearances and differences, the celestial man (spir- 
itually speaking) will occupy the mountains and the centres, 
the spiritual men the hills and the middle places, and the 
natural men the valleys and the circumferences, all resting 
upon a sensuo-corporeal basis reduced into order by the in- 
flux and presence of the sensuo-corporeal life of the Divine 
Man. 

The fixity of the natural plane of the human mind, makes 
it the seed-field of creation and the basis of the heavens 
above it. It is the centre from which nature is created and 
brought into the field of our consciousness. The laws and 
phenomena of nature, therefore, will remain forever the 
same, after the perturbations produced by evil have been 
eliminated. The laws of regeneration also, its processes and 



THE LORD'S KINGDOM ON EARTH. 385 

phenomena, so elaborately unfolded by Swedenborg from the 
Word, will remain forever unchanged. While the order of 
influx and evolution is from primates to ultimates and from 
centres to circumferences, the order of progression or devel- 
opment is the reverse. We have first the elemental kingdom, 
then the mineral, then the vegetable, then the animal, and 
lastly the human. Man will continue to be born in mere 
sensuals, and to pass from them into scientifics ; from natural 
to become rational, from rational spiritual, and from spiritual 
celestial. He will first be taught the Word in the letter. 
Advancing from appearances to realities, he will comprehend 
it in the spiritual sense, with Swedenborg as his guide. A 
discrete step further, and the celestial sense will be unfolded 
in his affections and dramatized in his life according to the 
opening of his inmost degree. 

The perfection predicated of the New Jerusalem, is and 
always must be relative and not absolute. It will be ineffa- 
bly superior to anything hitherto attained, but it will be for- 
ever inferior to the higher and grander progressions of the 
heavens. And it is well that it is so. The possibility of our 
perpetual advance toward perfection, lies in the fact that we 
are organically and permanently imperfect. The highest an- 
gels have their states of obscurity and twilight, of indifference 
and something akin to sadness. They are drawn toward 
their proprium again, however dead and conquered it seemed. 
They must then learn new truths for higher steps in regenera- 
tion. They must again ascend the ladder of prayer, of self- 
compulsion, and obedience, before they can descend again 
with new love and wisdom and power. And so will it be on 
the earth forever ; for these are organic necessities. 

The apostle John is the prophet of the states of the New 

Life. The burden of his song is the coming of the Lord, not 

merely as a revelation of spiritual truth, but as an organic, 

vital, universal descent of the Divine Humanity, for judgment 

33 Z 



386 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMATES. 

and reconstruction, into the very ultimates of his creation. 
Nothing less than that can produce the form and order of 
heaven upon earth. Nothing less than that can fully explain 
the book of Revelation. Judgments in the world of spirits 
and new revelations of divine truth, are only organic prepa- 
rations for the actual descent of the Divine Being. His First 
Coming was his own incarnation in a human body. His 
Second Coming, for which the first was only a preparation, is 
his descent into ultimates and his virtual (not actual) rein- 
carnation in the Body of Humanity. 

The new life or kingdom of God upon earth is fully de- 
scribed in the twenty-first chapter of Revelation. It is a new 
heaven and a new earth, or a new state of existence both 
spiritual and natural. It will be a new structure or new order 
of things ; a new soul (the new proprium) and a new body to 
correspond with it. This new life will fill the whole man in- 
dividually, and the whole church and world collectively. 
Therefore there will be " no more sea" — no more external, 
outlying regions of scientism or heathenism in the man or 
the race, out of harmony with the interior life. 

It will be a celestial life — a celestial church — all of whose 
outflowings into lower degrees are from the throne of the 
Lamb, or from the power and glory of the Divine Love. 
The holy city, New Jerusalem, is therefore called the Bride, 
the Lamb's wife, from the mystical marriage of the Lord with 
the church in man. The creation of the universe flows from 
the marriage of the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom. 
Its first proceeding is the marriage of the divine celestial and 
divine spiritual in the Infinite Humanity of Jesus Christ. 
This marriage produces the marriage of goodness and truth 
in the heavens, and is imaged in the marriage of spiritual 
heat and light in the creation of the spiritual universe, and 
in the marriage of natural heat and light in the creation of 
the natural universe. From the marriage of goodness and 



THE LORD'S KINGDOM ON EARTH. 387 

truth flows conjugial love — the first of all the affections com- 
ing from God, the highest and holiest, the fountain and pro- 
genitor of mutual love, and of all the infinite varieties of it, 
which constitute the life of the human race. 

The new life of the Church of the future is therefore cen- 
tered in the regenerate condition, the marriage of goodness 
and truth, of charity and faith, of the will and understanding, 
in the marriage of two souls in the bonds of conjugial love, 
so pure, so perfect, so absolute, that they are no longer two 
but one ; and the man carries the woman in himself, and the 
woman carries the man in herself, consciously, emotionally, 
intellectually, sensationally, wherever either of them may be. 
(C. L. 178 ; Spl. D. 4407.) This profoundest mystery of the 
heavens, which must exist organically even if unconsciously 
in every man and woman in the world, according to his or her 
inmost states of regeneration, is now being faintly unfolded 
upon the earth ; and it will grow and develop in the Church 
in proportion as the interiors of men are opened, and the Lord 
descends through them according to the laws and processes 
of divine order, down into the sensories of the body and the 
ultimates of nature. 

The reconstruction and sanctification of the married rela- 
tion upon earth, will begin from regenerate centres in the 
New Church. Only the spiritually married are admitted to 
the marriage supper of the Lamb. In proportion as the old 
Babylon of self-love, that " mother of harlots," who has made 
the inhabitants of the earth "drunk with the wine of her 
fornication," is cast out of the human heart, the heavenly 
marriage will take place in the souls of men ; and descending 
into the sensories of their bodies, will chasten and modify all 
other loves, radiating celestial influences from centres to cir- 
cumferences, until the church and the world are "permeated 
and perfumed with the airs of heaven." 

The Lord is present in conjugial love and in the mutual love 



388 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMATES. 

which flows from it. These constitute the new or celestial 
proprium, which is the new life from the Lord given to man 
to enjoy as if it were his own. It is the means of conjunc- 
tion between the Lord and the soul. It is the life of the Lord 
in the disciple, not only known but felt to be such. (A. C. 
8865.) It is the realization of the Lord's words, " As thou, 
Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in 
us." 

Therefore when John saw the New Jerusalem "as a bride 
adorned for her husband/' or comprehended its truths with 
the understanding, he also heard "a great voice out of heaven," 
or perceived its inmost life from the affections ; and that voice 
said: 

" Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will 
dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God Him- 
self shall be with them, their God. ' ' 

Hear moreover what our Lord says : 

"And the glory which thou hast given me, I have given them : 
that they may be one, even as we are one. ' } 

' ' / in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect 
in one" 

Hear, too, what the apostle Paul says : 

' ' I am crucified with Christ : nevertheless I live ; yet not I, 
but Christ liveth in me. ' ' 

Hear, also, what Swedenborg says : 

"The things appertaining to the internal man are of the 
Lord, so that it may be said that the internal man is the Lord." 
—A. C. 1594. 

The Lord is therefore descending, with what Swedenborg 
calls "an extraordinary, active presence," into the body of 
Humanity. He is being felt, according to the opening of the 
celestial interiors, as a living Guest, a pervading Presence, a 
divine Guide, in the souls of men. He is no longer to them 



THE LORD'S KINGDOM ON EARTH. 389 

an objective Being, represented by sun or moon, and to be 
worshiped in temples. He comes independently of all eccle- 
siasticisms. He is seen within by a spiritual light ; He is felt 
within as a spiritual " glory.' ' In his presence there can be 
no weeping, or sorrow, or pain, or death : in his atmospheres, 
no fear, or unbelief, or falsehood, or any unclean or evil 
thing. 

This angelic state is now possible to men upon the earth. 
It is an altogether new state, never before possible. It is the 
beginning of the marriage-union of heaven and earth. The 
Lord is not in love alone, but in that love only which pro- 
duces truth. He is not in truth alone, but in that truth only 
which leads to good. The celestial life described in this 
marvelous chapter (Rev. xxi.), is therefore rooted, grounded, 
and imbedded in that infinite system of spiritual truth, repre- 
sented by the Holy City, with its walls of jasper, its gates of 
pearl, its streets of gold. Therefore whoever has the celestial 
degree of life opened in him, has received the good which 
leads to truth ; and he enters, according to the degree and 
quality of his good, into the spontaneous and intuitive per- 
ception of the corresponding spiritual truths of the Word as 
revealed through Swedenborg. On the other hand, he who 
has stored his mind with the spiritual truths of the Word re- 
vealed through Swedenborg, has within him the sacred vessels 
which are receptive of the celestial life ; and woe to him if it 
comes not to the birth ! — if the Rachel of his soul does not 
exclaim in agony, " Give me children, or else I die ! " 

How can this holy state of life be realized in the individual 
and in the race ? The processes are described in the spiritual- 
natural sense of the preceding chapters of Revelation. These 
can be clearly comprehended, if we will bring the spiritual 
sense as revealed through Swedenborg down into ultimate 
application, guided always by the infallible science of corre- 
spondences he has unfolded, and remembering the following 
33* 



39° THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

universal principles he has laid down : ist. That the interior 
senses of the Word rise above time, space, persons, names, or 
things, into the abstract regions of good and truth. The 
judgment upon Babylon and the Dragon, therefore, were 
not only personal judgments upon Catholics and Protestants 
in the world of spirits* but universal judgments upon qualities 
or states of life and thought wherever they may be found. 
2d. That the spiritual world is the world of causes, and causes 
produce their effects by influx and correspondence, moving 
from above downward and from within outward. Therefore 
the judgments initiated upon the qualities and states of life 
and thought in the spiritual world in the last century, must 
of necessity be prolonged and repeated in the natural sphere, 
where similar qualities and states exist, and obstruct the Divine 
entrance into the lower realms of human life. 

The woman arrayed in purple and scarlet, and "decked with 
gold and precious stones and pearls/ ' sitting upon the scarlet 
beast, " full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and 
ten horns,' ' is the human proprium as to its evil affections, 
its love of self and the world, the root of all sin and folly, 
the source of all wicked desires and false principles, the 
fountain of self-righteousness and self-aggrandizement and 
of the lust of spiritual domination. The powers of this 
evil proprium "make war with the Lamb/' the divine good- 
ness, and not with Christ or the Word, the divine truth. 
They are overcome by the Lamb, and cast down and cast 
out, so that the proprium can rule no more forever. The 
tremendous wail of sorrow and despair which goes up from 
those who have loved it, and believed it, and lived in it, can 
only be appreciated by those who have awakened to a sense 
of its terrible nature, and have discovered how hard and 
painful it is to die thoroughly to the last one of its infernal 
affections. Those, also, who have laid down the life of the 
old proprium to take up the life of the new, can understand 



THE LORD'S KINGDOM ON EARTH. 39I 

the gladness and triumph of the heavens at the removal of 
this proprium, and their saying, "for the marriage of the 
Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.' ' 

All this takes place in the sphere of the affections, in the 
inmost or celestial degree (in simultaneous order) of the 
natural plane of the human mind. In strict correspondence 
with these things, the divine prophecy goes on to state what 
occurs in the spiritual degree. The heaven of that degree is 
opened, and the White Horse and his rider, the Word of God, 
appear, followed by the armies of heaven. This is the reve- 
lation of the Lord to us as the Divine Truth. The Divine 
Truth overcomes all falsity, and enlightens the spiritual 
understanding into correspondence with the regenerate move- 
ments of the celestial will. Therefore the beast and the 
false prophet and the kings of the earth make war upon him 
and are overcome by him and cast out forever. Note well, 
however, that the King of kings achieves for us in the sphere 
of thought, the corresponding work which the Lamb of God 
had already accomplished in the sphere of the affections. 
They move together on their discrete planes pari passu, or 
step by step, because they are the divine heat and light whose 
marriage-union creates the universe and regenerates the souls 
of men. 

The spiritual sense of the Word as revealed through Swe- 
denborg is a middle term, something without independent 
use or meaning, and only existing because connected with 
the two other terms. It is like the beautiful light of winter, 
smitten with barrenness when standing alone. Its truths fall 
like scientifics into the memory of man, and lie fruitless and 
lifeless until the celestial degree is opened and they are vivified 
by the fire which descends from heaven. When, however, 
they are so vivified, they become the winged lightnings of 
the divine wisdom, and passing into ultimates, manifest that 
power which resides in the letter or the lowest plane, because 



392 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

it is the basis and containant of all interior forces. The 
successive opening of the three degrees, and the descent of 
the Lord through them as the Divine Love, Wisdom, and 
Power, will produce the final and astounding effects of the 
judgment described in the twentieth chapter of Revelation, 
which we will now examine. 

There are here three great events which occur, by the laws 
of influx and correspondence, in the three degrees (in simul- 
taneous order) of the natural plane of the human mind. 
First : The binding of the evil principle in the bottomless 
pit, and the reign of the good with Christ for a thousand 
years (vs. 1-6). Second : The last contest between the 
saints and Satan, who besieges the beloved city (vs. 7-10). 
Third : The general resurrection of the dead and the vanish- 
ing away of heaven and earth, so that the new heaven and 
the new earth, with the New Jerusalem of the next chapter, 
become possible (vs. 11-15). Swedenborg here unfolds the 
spiritual sense of the Word only so far as it relates to certain 
movements in the world of spirits in the last century, and 
which seem to have for us only a certain historical and phil- 
osophical interest. By the descending and increasing light 
of the Word, the rational mind may now perceive that these 
astounding events are occurring and about to occur in every 
individual soul, so as to prepare mankind for the evolution of 
the new heaven and the new earth. 

The angel coming down from heaven, "having the key of 
the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand, M is the 
Lord descending for judgment and salvation from primaries 
to ultimates. The Lord alone opens and shuts, and our re- 
generation is effected by his opening our interiors to heav- 
enly associations, and shutting off the influx of the hells into 
our life. The evil principle, represented in its three degrees 
— the evil (devil), the false (Satan), and the sensual (serpent) 
— is cast into the bottomless pit, which is the hell of our own 



THE LORD'S KINGDOM ON EARTH. 393 

hearts. This is the subjugation (laying hold of and binding) 
and removal of the proprium, concealing and shutting it up, 
to make room for the life and reign of Christ in the soul. 
This is the state of the angels whose proprium, bound, sealed, 
and shut up within them, is just as evil as that of the devils 
in hell. But it is utterly separated from them, and they live 
in the new proprium, formed out of the substance of the Di- 
vine Humanity, and given to them to occupy and to feel as 
if it were their own. Such must be the state of the man of 
the New Church, else he is of this Church only in name. 

In exact proportion as the proprium is removed from man, 
does he turn away from the worship of the beast, which rep- 
resents all the evil lusts engendered by self-love and the love 
of the world. In the same proportion does he obey the com- 
mandments of God, and is guided and judges himself and all 
others by the truths of the Word. He lives and reigns with 
Christ, because Christ lives and reigns in him. As this heav- 
enly life opens and deepens in him, he will surely be "be- 
headed for the witness of Jesus ;" that is, he will be misun- 
derstood, misrepresented, repudiated, and scoffed at, especially 
by those in the church to whom his celestial state of life and 
love are incomprehensible. Thanks to the mercy of the 
Lord, these dawning states of the perfect life in us are con- 
cealed under his altar, and protected from the infestations of 
evil spirits and of men. 

" A thousand years" has no relation to time, but means 
the persistency and intensity of the holy state of life involved 
in the context. Ten signifies the remains of good and truth 
implanted in the internal man by the Lord. One hundred 
means the same thing in greater fullness or realization. A 
thousand years still further intensifies the quality or state of 
life. "The rest of the dead lived not again until the thou- 
sand years were finished " means that the "first resurrec- 
tion/' or the vivification of celestial remains, always precedes 



394 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

the awakening of the intellect and the resurrection of the 
senses to the divine life. Swedenborg says that the process 
of regeneration by knowledges and intellectual truths, cannot 
take place until a plane has been first formed in infancy by 
the insemination of celestial affections (A. C. 1555). The 
thousand years ending, does not mean that the states of the 
celestial life cease ; but that on attaining a certain fullness 
of state the representation changes, and the celestial passes 
down into the spiritual degree, producing a new and different 
but corresponding series of phenomena. 

These phenomena of the spiritual degree relate to the con- 
test between the true and the false for the possession of the 
human mind. Therefore Satan appears again, out of prison, 
to deceive the nations ; that is, to persuade us that our appa- 
rent good is real good, that our thoughts and opinions are 
true and right, that our goodness and truth are our own, and 
that we may righteously congratulate ourselves upon being 
what we are. He therefore gathers together all the lies and 
falsities that have ever blinded the intellect and darkened the 
understanding, to make war upon the heavenly doctrines 
which resist him, and to besiege " the beloved city." These 
confederated false principles are overcome and cast out by 
fire from heaven — by the descent or influx of the conjoined 
good and truth (heat and light) from the celestial and spir- 
itual heavens. These also reveal the great fact that Satan 
(the false principle) is really the devil or the evil principle : 
and he is cast out into the hell of lusts and falsities, with 
the beast and the false prophet. Thus regeneration proceeds 
through the spiritual degree. 

The Lord, having thus taken possession of the sphere of 
affection as the divine love, and of the sphere of thought as 
the divine truth, descends for judgment and reconstruction 
into the ultimate plane of the life and conduct. The great 
white throne represents the power and purity of the divine 



THE LORD'S KINGDOM ON EARTH. 395 

truth descending into the natural plane. The heaven and 
earth that fled away, are the internal and external life of the 
proprium — for the proprium of the natural man has its heaven 
or its religious life, and its earth or its social and business 
life, and these cannot stand a moment before the face of the 
Lord. All the dead things of the natural life — the spiritually 
dead, externals without internals — are brought into judgment, 
and inspected from the books of the memory and of life ac- 
cording to the deeds done in the body. All the evil and ' 
false things of the natural man are thus separated and cast off 
into the subdued and conquered hell of the proprium, noth- 
ing remaining whose name or quality is not in harmony with 
the divine life in the soul. After these things have been ac- 
complished — the individual soul and the church having been 
structured and ordered according to the forms and the laws 
of heaven — the apostle sees the new heaven and the new 
earth, and the New Jerusalem descending from above. 

The spiritual truths of the Apocalypse, passing into the 
natural mind of the apostle, entered the sphere of times and 
spaces, and the representative events and visions are related 
as if they occurred in successive or historical order, and we 
are obliged to think and speak accordingly. But we can 
never understand this holy book, unless we also grasp the 
idea that these things are always happening, simultaneously, 
at once and all the time, with infinite varieties, to every in- 
dividual soul. Thus the Babylon is not utterly cast out of 
the man's soul, and then the Divine Truth revealed to him 
on the White Horse, and after that Satan bound in chains, 
and still after that a judgment of externals, and still later the 
appearance of the new heaven and the new earth. This is 
indeed partially true, for one thing springs from another and 
effects follow causes ; but it is not all the truth. 

The other part of the truth necessary for our comprehen- 
sion of the whole, is, that the destruction of Babylon, the 



3<?6 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

binding of Satan, and the unfolding of the new heaven with- 
in us, are simultaneous and identical processes. So of the 
appearance of the rider on the White Horse, the descent of 
fire from heaven to destroy Satan, and the revelation of the 
spiritual truths involved in the descent of the holy city, New 
Jerusalem. So, also, of the great white throne in ultimates, 
and the evolution of the new earth in which there was no 
more sea. The three discrete degrees are, moreover, so made 
one by influx and correspondence, that the religion and busi- 
ness of the external life will always reveal, in the individual 
and the church, how far Babylon has been destroyed, Satan 
chained, the new heaven opened, etc., etc. 

The heaven and earth of the proprium of the natural mind 
is now being visited by the "extraordinary, active presence " 
of that Divine Power which sits upon the great white throne. 
The internal and external of that proprium is about to be ex- 
plored through the books which will be opened. The relig- 
ious life and the social and business life of that proprium will 
be found so evil and false, that they will be disorganized and 
dispersed by the presence of the face or the interior manifes- 
tation of the Lord. Little or nothing will be found in them 
but the evil and false things from the sea and from death and 
from hell. There will be a remnant left, however — that very 
small portion of genuine love of the Lord and the neighbor 
called "remains" — the name or quality "written in the 
book of life >" and from that the new life of the individual 
and of the church will begin. 

When the proprium even of the highest angel is altogether 
evil and false, how can there be .any religion of the proprium ? 
It is, of course, an evil and false religion ; but the proprium 
of the natural man is exceedingly religious. It seizes upon 
the religious idea with the utmost avidity, appropriates it to 
itself with the greatest delight, busies itself incessantly in 
church-building and church-going, in organizing societies, 



THE LORD'S KINGDOM ON EARTH. Z97 

conventions, and hierarchies, and actually enjoys all kinds 
of self-sacrifice, humiliation, and suffering. Swedenborg saw 
men of this kind in the other life, who had been models of 
piety and had preached the gospel with zeal and power, who, 
when interiorly examined, were found to be consumed with 
the love of self and the world. (S. D. 4325.) Nor are these 
men always, or even often, hypocrites, who consciously and 
of set purpose subordinate the truths of heaven to their own 
selfish interests ; but they are deceived by the cunning Satan* 
of the proprium, and have no conception of the true nature 
and tendency of the false sanctities in which they are im- 
mersed. (A. C. 215.) 

I am indebted to Henry James, one of the profoundest 
thinkers of our faith, for my first clear conception of the 
church-proprium or ecclesiastical spirit as the root of self- 
righteousness — an evil far worse than lust, intemperance, or 
gambling; for these run by organic laws into punishment 
and correction, but self-righteousness ends in spiritual in- 
sanity — one of the saddest and most incurable of all states. 
This cunning, cruel, and malignant church-proprium, buried 
deep under beautiful and lovely externals, is not confined to 
ecclesiastical bodies, but is rampant in us all, building up 
our absurd personal and private pretensions, disguising and 
extenuating our evils, and defending our falsities with the 
fervor, humility, and sincerity of truth itself. "The heart 
is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked ; who 
can know it?" (Jer. xvii. 9.) 

The proprium of the natural man is hell (A. C. 694, 987, 
3812); and therefore the religion of the proprium is the 
religion of hell. Think over the majority of motives which 
lead men and keep them in what they call the religious life. 
Fear is the principal one — fear of God (not the holy fear), 
fear of punishment, fear of each other (a demon who loves 
to haunt ecclesiastical bodies), fear of the congregation, fear 
34 



39^ THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

of the minister, fear of inconsistency, fear of the world's 
opinion, fear of the loss of reputation or position, etc. Then 
self-interest, which is the love of self and the world in one — 
ambition, love of approbation, the hope of reward, sense of 
personal worth and dignity, motives springing from policy, 
fashion, respectability, conformity to social demands, and all 
shades and varieties of self-seeking. All these elements of 
the religion of the selfhood, constitute that heaven which 
fled away from before the face of the Lord, and which is 
doomed henceforth to utter destruction. When these ele- 
ments (which belong to the sea, death, and hell) are detected 
and exposed in us, and cast out of us into that " lake of fire M 
where they belong, we shall find out how much or how little 
there is in us of that saving name or quality which is " written 
in the book of life." 

"The devil/ ' says Henry James, "has been from the 
beginning our only heaven-appointed churchman and states- 
man, the very man of men for doing all that showy work of 
the world, namely, persuading, preaching, cajoling, govern- 
ing, which is requisite to be done, and which is fitly paid by 
the honors and emoluments of the world." And again he 
says: "I admit, nay I insist, that the devil is fast becoming 
and will one day be a perfect gentleman j that he will wholly 
unlearn his nasty tricks of vice and crime, and become a 
model of sound morality, infusing an unwonted energy into 
the police department, and inflating public worship with an 
unprecedented pomp and magnificence." 

The earth which corresponds to the heaven of the natural 
proprium, and which dissolves away with it from the face of 
the Lord, so that no place is found for them, is the external, 
social, business, and institutional life of man. This is just 
as false and evil as the religion of the proprium, which is the 
interior source from which it springs. It is a vast tissue of 
frauds, shams, illusions, selfishness, and injustice, with might 
instead of right, with cunning instead of wisdom, with policy 



THE LORD'S KINGDOM ON EARTH. 399 

instead of virtue, with competition instead of co-operation, 
with the irredeemable love of self and the world instead of 
the love of God and the neighbor. The general character 
of this life will be exposed and revealed by the light of 
heaven ; for the sea, death, and hell will be compelled to 
disgorge their secrets for universal inspection. By what 
revolutions, catastrophies, tribulations, and chaoses all this 
is to be accomplished, it is useless to conjecture ; but whether 
it takes ten years or a thousand, the prophecies of the Word 
will be fulfilled, old things will pass entirely away — the old 
wine and the old bottles — and all things will be made new. 
" Even so, come, Lord Jesus ! " 

The secret of the New Life and the kingdom of heaven in 
the soul, is the binding of Satan, that old serpent which is 
also the Devil, in the bottomless pit. This is the subjection 
and suppression of the proprium. Only in proportion as this 
is done, are the truths of the Word so vivified in us as to be- 
come genuine forces of life. (S. D. 1877.) Only in propor- 
tion as this is done, can we be delivered from the sea, death, 
and hell of the natural man. Only in proportion as this is 
done, can the new heaven and the new earth be formed in us. 

The subjugation of the human will and its incorporation 
into the Divine will so as to be one with it, constitute the 
sum total of religion. Man's whole work is to acknowledge 
the Divine Humanity of the Lord, to rely on his mercy, to 
trust in his power, and to abstain from all evils as sins against 
Him. His natural instinct is to will to do evil. (S. D. 4241.) 
When he therefore wilfully desists from evil, his own will is 
subjugated and suppressed, and the Lord's will reigns in him. 
The ten commandments teach only the acknowledgment of 
God and the abstinence from evil. This abstaining from 
evil as sin against God, is an entirely different thing from 
self-denial, which is capable of enormous abuse, and has been 
in all ages a prolific source of self-righteousness and fantasy. 



400 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

The proprium is organically and eternally evil, for it is 
never changed. No man has an independent selfhood which 
is better or worse than that of other men. No man is ever 
better at one time than he was at another. There is not a 
particle of individual goodness or holiness in any man, spirit, 
or angel. Man can never, never, of himself, do anything 
good or think anything true. He receives all things from 
the Lord — his perception of life, his affections, his thoughts, 
his ability, his sense of power. He may believe and even 
acknowledge that his goodness and wisdom are from the 
Lord ; but if he thinks that he has really become good and 
true, and therefore is now better or wiser than he was before, 
or better and wiser than his neighbor who does not acknowl- 
edge the Lord, he is in spiritual darkness; he appropriates 
both good and evil to himself, and his real states, however 
pious and good he may seem to be and feel himself to be, 
are full of self-love and fantasy. 

The false interpretation put upon Swedenborg's statement 
that we must do good "as of ourselves/' has reduced the 
standard of New-Church life quite to the level of the stand- 
ards of the dead church. It has led even such men as 
Prof. Parsons to believe that the life of the Lord is given to 
us to be absolutely and actually our own, and of course that 
his goodness and his wisdom also become absolutely ours. 
This is the basis of the Roman Catholic doctrine of merit. 
It is the root of all self-righteousness. It harmonizes thor- 
oughly with the aphorism of the natural man, "God helps 
those who help themselves. ' ' In opposition to this gospel 
of materialism, Swedenborg teaches that the life, goodness, 
and wisdom of God apparent in us, are always his and not 
ours ; that their seeming to be ours, is always an appearance 
and not a reality (D. P. 308) ; that we are organically and 
forever ineradicably evil and false, and that nothing but the 
personal presence of the Lord in us, prevents us all — men, 



THE LORD'S KINGDOM ON EARTH. 401 

spirits, and angels — from obeying our infernal instincts and 
rushing headlong into hell. 

The difference between men, outside of special organic 
differences, lies in the fact, that some are more or less with- 
held from our common evil nature than others: and that 
some are more or less willingly receptive of the Lord than 
others. To acknowledge that all goodness and truth are from 
the Lord in us, is one thing — and is the Old-Church stand- 
point ; to see and feel that all goodness and truth apparently 
ours, is really the Lord in us, is a different thing — and is the 
New-Church standpoint. If the Lord ever enables us to be 
good and true, we are justified in all our self-righteousness; 
but if only the Lord Himself is good and true in us, then are 
we nothing but the branch in the Vine. Then also do we 
first become capable of realizing his personal presence and 
guidance in our souls. The proprium, with its sense of indi- 
vidual life and personal pretensions, must be seized, bound, 
and sealed up in the pit of our inherent hell, before Christ 
can reign in us and live in us forever. 

The men and women who are undergoing this secret, 
silent, but stupendous process, are the spiritual martyrs of 
the age, ignorant of the causes and misinterpreting the phe- 
nomena of their martyrdom. As a general rule, to which 
there may be exceptions, men whose proprium is being seized, 
bound, and sealed up forever, and who are being unfolded 
into the new heaven and the new earth, gradually lose inter- 
est in external things — in men, parties, churches, organiza- 
tions, etc., etc. They become indifferent and flag in their 
business activities. They sometimes appear stupid, and seem 
to forget everything they had ever known. Swedenborg him- 
self was reduced to this state before he conversed with angels 
and spirits. (S. D. 3904.) These men who are thus dying 
to the proprium, neglect even their duties — for the discharge 
of all duties has hitherto been saturated with the spirit of 
34* 2 A 



402 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

proprium. They are blind to their own interests and care- 
less of the opinion of others. Most of them fall behind in 
the race of life, and become poor, or sick, or embarrassed, or 
unpopular, and so fade away from the sight and thought and 
care of their fellow men, misrepresented, misunderstood, and 
held in comparative contempt. 

Their spiritual trials are very great, and the vast majority 
do not interpret them correctly. These " babes and suck- 
lings" conceal their experiences, having no one to sympa- 
thize with them or to comprehend them. The evil spirits 
about them are troubled at the impending loss of proprium, 
and infuse into the sufferers all sorts of doubts, reproaches, 
self-accusations, despairs, and temptations. Men in this state 
of life have committed suicide, or sunk into temporary in- 
sanity, or rushed as by insane impulse into evils of that sen- 
sual degree, which, is the last stronghold of the devil and is 
regenerated with so much difficulty. They are weary, strug- 
gling, reticent souls, whose deep religious nature finds no 
expression. And yet they belong to .the class of those who 
are beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, and who come up 
out of great tribulation and are washed in the blood of the 
Lamb, and who live and reign with Christ a thousand years. 

On the contrary, men who are well-to-do, contented and 
happy, satisfied with their uses, falling in with the general 
current of human feeling and thought, admiring and admired, 
doing good and seeking truth " as of themselves "; " eating 
and drinking, buying and selling " ; who float on the tide of 
popular favor, and command the greatest attention and re- 
spect, and who are in the most honored and prized positions 
of religious activity, are immersed in the spirit of the Old 
Church, and are obstructionists to the true kingdom of God. 
Their vastations, judgments, and deliverances are of necessity 
deferred to the next life. The roots of their proprium, of all 
their affections and thoughts, are planted deep down in the 



THE LORD'S KINGDOM ON EARTH. 403 

soil of the present state of things ; and they can only be held 
to their excellent and necessary uses (for the Lord never 
breaks but bends), by being kept in closed and fixed con- 
ditions as to spirit. Nor can they rise at present, without 
great interior struggles, above their ecclesiastical naturalism ; 
but they will deny, repudiate, and resist the coming of the 
Lord into the Body of Humanity, instead of into the little 
organic forms they have prepared for his reception ; and his 
coming will be as much " like a thief in the night " to them, 
as to any ecclesiastics of the Old Church. 

It is an utter fallacy to suppose that the New Life, the 
kingdom of heaven upon earth, can be attained by any pos- 
sible extensions or intensifications of the sanctities and spirit- 
ualities of former dispensations. Men who live in those sanc- 
tities and spiritualities will refuse to come to the Supper of 
the Divine Man. They have bought land and must see it ; 
or they have obtained oxen and must prove them ; or they 
have married a wife and cannot come. The guests of the 
Lord are found in the highways and hedges, and they are 
the spiritually poor, maimed, halt, blind, miserable, and 
naked. 

The road to the New Life is not through prayers, and 
praises, and sacrifices, and glorifications. It is through aban- 
donments, and privations, and sufferings, and death, and 
annihilation. (S. D. 2043, *4> 1708-) The true disciples 
must leave their nets in the ship with their father Zebedee. 
They must sell all they have and give to the poor, and fol- 
low Christ. They must hate father and mother, wife and 
children, brethren and sisters, yea, and their own lives also. 
They must lay down their own life, the natural proprium, 
freely and forever ; and the life they take up will be the new 
proprium, made from the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. 
"Whosoever he be of you/ ' saith the Master, "that forsaketh 
not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.' ' 



404 THE LORD'S DESCENT INTO ULTIMA TES. 

My friend who enjoys spiritual vision, always wide awake, 
once received a striking representation of how the business 
of the world will be transacted when the Lord is all in all 
upon earth as He is in heaven. He seemed to be in a livery- 
stable where horse-trades were going on. While looking at 
the people standing about, he perceived that the atmospheres 
of the Lord filled the place. Examining the persons more 
closely, he discovered that the Lord occupied the interiors of 
every man — that He was transacting all the business Himself, 
did all the talking and all the listening, all the buying and all 
the selling, and all by wonderful influxes, without infringing 
upon the sensations of life and independence peculiar to each 
individual. 

This statement, so extraordinary and incredible to most 
men, is perfectly clear to the readers of Swedenborg who has 
revealed to us the structure of the heavens and the phenomena 
of the other life. " The functions of the angels," he says, 
" are functions of the Lord through the angels, for the angels 
discharge them, not from themselves but from the Lord." — 
H. H. 391. 

Again he says : 

" An angel does not speak from himself but from the Lord. 
. . . The angels are indignant if anything of good and truth 
is attributed to themselves in what they speak ; ... for they 
know and perceive that they have from the Lord, that is, from 
the Divine, everything good and true which they think, will, 
and do."— A. C. 4085. 

When the Lord has entered the Body of Humanity, com- 
ing to abide and to tabernacle with men, such will be the 
manner in which all the work and phenomena of life will take 
place. We can imagine what stupendous revolutions will oc- 
cur in the social, commercial, political, and religious life of 
the race ! How will He scourge out of his temple the money- 
changers and those who sell doves ! — the manipulators of mar- 



THE LORD'S KINGDOM ON EARTH. 405 

kets. those who make and sell liquors, who put false marks upon 
goods, who gamble in stocks and futures, who exploit their 
fellow-men, congratulating 'their souls upon the riches they 
have acquired ! How will He extirpate the self-seeking, the 
avarice, the ambition, the vanity, the flatteries, the competi- 
tions, and all the other spiritual infamies of the present Chris- 
tian world ! 

Now, dear reader, I have finished these four essays, the sub- 
stance of which was foreshadowed to me from the interior 
about six months ago. I beg you to read and re-read and 
ponder well everything I have said, by the light of Sweden- 
borg's revealings and the Divine Word. The seeds of truth 
here planted under the guidance of Divine Providence, may 
be hidden from sight and forgotten for a while ; but they will 
return to the surface in due time, and bring forth flowers and 
fruit. 



THE END. 



Dr. James John Garth Wilkinson (London) says: 

" Swedenborg's writings are a library in themselves, and display 
the most careful method. He quarreled with no church ; he 
set himself in opposition to no organized body. He was too cath- 
olic to found a sect. He spoke the truth entrusted to him, and 
left it to permeate the lives and opinions of succeeding ages. 
His charity was as broad as the ocean which rolls its waves on 
every shore. The most magnificent scholar of his age, he was 
at the same time the humblest Christian." — Introduction to "Econ- 
omy of the Animal Kingdom" p. lxxvi. 



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